Democrats could barely contain their excitement as they gleefully reported the results of the new Quinnipiac Presidential Poll. It showed Joe Biden ahead of President Trump by “landslide proportions” and top Democrats ahead of him as well. Sanders beat Trump by 9 points, Harris by 8, Warren by 7, and Buttigieg and Booker both ahead of the President by 5.

Biden was ahead of Trump in nearly every category. Women chose Biden by a margin of 60-34 per cent; men 47-46; black voters 85-12; Hispanics, 58-33; Democrats, 95-3 and Independents, 58-28.

Trump was ahead of Biden by a 91-6 per cent margin among Republicans and, among white voters, by a 47-46 per cent margin.

Complete polling results can be viewed here.

We are 17 months away from the election. At this point in the 2016 election season, polls showed Hillary Clinton ahead of Trump by huge margins. Real Clear Politics shows three major polls that were taken at this point:

A Quinnipiac poll taken between 5/19/15-5/26/15 had Clinton winning by 18 points. Fox News had Clinton on top by 17 and a CNN/ORC poll conducted between 6/26/15 and 6/28/15 had Clinton ahead by a whopping 24 points.

An Associated Press poll published on 10/25/16, two weeks before the election, gave the race to Clinton by 13 points, the same margin that Quinnipiac gives to Biden today, a year and a half out.

Aside from that, there are others reasons for skepticism.

The Washington Examiner’s Philip Klein finds the result which shows Trump ahead of Biden by just one point to be an oddity. Klein writes:

In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 20 points among white voters — and this was not unheard of. Mitt Romney beat the Obama-Biden ticket by 20 points among whites in 2012, and John McCain won whites by 12 points in 2008…George W. Bush beat Al Gore by 13 points among whites in 2000, despite Gore being a southern white male Democrat.

Not since 1996, when Bill Clinton came within two points of Bob Dole, has any Democrat come within single digits among whites.

Klein says that “if Democrats win, it will be because of some combination of the nominee boosting performance among minority voters and/or eating into Trump’s softer support among white voters. But they are unlikely to win by cutting into his edge among whites by as much as this poll would indicate.”

The gaffe-prone Biden never managed to break into the top tier of candidates in either of his previous runs. Newt Gingrich sums it up best:

Biden has always been a weak, self-destructive candidate and he is still a weak, self-destructive candidate. From defending the Chinese, to sniffing people’s hair, to plagiarizing others, there is a “Bidenness” that plagued his first two campaigns for president and will probably destroy this one.

The former vice-president has felt the need to abandon many of his more “centrist” positions to compete with the far-left field of Democratic candidates. The most striking example was Biden’s flip flop on the Hyde Amendment. “After a few days of pressure, Biden caved to the left. A lifetime career of citing his Catholicism was washed away by the radical left in less than a week.”

As the other Democratic candidates have lurched to the left, Biden has felt the need to change his positions, ones he has held over his long political career.

He also faces other strong headwinds. His son’s business dealings with China and the Ukraine will continue to be a challenge for Biden.

His threat to withhold aid to Ukraine until they fired the official who was about to investigate his son will require some explanation. Biden is shown on video bragging to an audience about having issued an ultimatum to the Ukraine government that if a particular official wasn’t fired by the time he left the country (in the next six hours), he would withhold U.S. aid. That will be a tough one to explain in a debate.

On Tuesday, he told supporters that Trump represents an “existential threat” to the U.S.  This nebulous statement is very serious and Biden provided no substance to back it up. We’re still here. The economy is booming Joe and Trump has a long list of accomplishments to tout. Yet he represents an existential threat. Just like every other liberal, Biden can’t come up with a specific crime the President has committed or an action which has endangered the U.S.

In the meantime, the Attorney General’s investigation, led by John Durham, is underway and will most likely unearth some uncomfortable and inconvenient truths about the activities of the Obama administration. And we know for a fact that Biden was a participant in all of the Russian collusion meetings which were so secretive that Obama officials cut the video feed in the Situation Room to maintain privacy. What was up?

Finally, Biden’s age will be an factor. He lacks both the mental and physical stamina he once had. Although Trump is not much younger, he is tireless as President and as a campaigner.

Sorry pollsters, I just don’t believe these numbers.