In 2000, only a few hundred votes separated winner and loser in the key state of Florida.
Washington, United States:
At the end of January, shortly after the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States, the New York Stock Exchange reached an all-time high and Donald Trump’s biggest concern was the impact of Boeing’s woes on the economy.
“The American dream is back, bigger, better and stronger than ever,” said the American president in Davos, already in campaign mode.
Fast forward nine months. More than nine million people confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus and nearly 230,000 have died from Covid-19 – making it the third leading cause of death of the year.
The numbers get even grimmer when the hundreds of thousands more deaths from misdiagnosed Covid-19 cases and indirect causes are added to the tally.
Despite an impressive rebound in the third quarter, millions of Americans lost their jobs, shattering the most trusted electoral argument of US presidents seeking a second term – that of economic strength.
Trump’s defeat at the polls next Tuesday is far from certain, and the Republican believes the electorate will punish his rival, Joe Biden, for not campaigning intensively on the ground.
But his handling of the pandemic has certainly cost him votes.
Like that of Kimberly McLemore, 56 from St. Augustine, Florida, who worked in jewelry before the pandemic hit.
McLemore, a longtime Republican, said she thought Trump was doing a good job at first, when he held daily briefings and seemed to listen to scientists, but she later realized he was not taking the crisis into account. serious.
“In good conscience, I cannot vote for this man,” she told AFP, adding that both her parents, who are in their eighties, also voted for Biden the first time around. that they had voted for a Democrat.
“Vote like your life depends on it” is also how a narrator closes an advertisement for The Lincoln Project, a collective of high-profile former Republicans on a mission to defeat Trump.
Thin margins
In rallies and on Twitter, Trump accused “fake news lamestream media” of focusing on “Covid, Covid, Covid” to hurt his chances of re-election.
The virus has hampered his efforts since the start of the campaign.
In June, he hosted his first pandemic rally in an indoor arena in Tulsa, which managed to be both an embarrassing attendance disaster but also possibly a very widespread event.
Surveys conducted for several months have shown that Americans misjudge their leader in the face of the virus.
Only 40% approve, according to a recent Gallup poll, down from 60% in March.
These types of polls are too general to detect whether there will be a so-called “Covid effect” on the election.
But on Friday, researchers behind a new analysis in the journal Science Advances said they found just that.
They drew on more than 300,000 responses to the summer 2019 and 2020 survey, and then linked that to local Covid-19 death rates, concluding that the pandemic may have significantly damaged public support for Trump.
Specifically, people in counties that saw their death rates double in the month before the day they were surveyed were on average 0.14% less likely to vote Trump and 0.28% less likely to vote for Republican candidates. in Congress.
It may not sound like a lot. But Christopher Warshaw of George Washington University told AFP it could still be important.
“Many elections are determined by small margins. So even relatively small effects are large enough,” he said.
“It is very possible, based on our results, that Covid could affect the president and other members of his party, the share of votes of both parties by half a point or a point or more in some States and counties. “
That might still be enough for Biden. In 2000, only a few hundred votes separated winner and loser in the key state of Florida.
And four years ago, a meager 77,000 vote lead in three states (Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) tipped the election in Mr. Trump’s favor.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
