In the last week or so we have been treated to a range of excited op-eds that have sought to definitively answer why Trump will be re-elected or why he will be vanquished forever. Political punditry is today’s necromancy, where trawling through polling with some gut feel thrown in is a latter-day form of goat entrail reading.
The actuarial analysis is that Trump should be at better than even money to be re-elected. This is based on historical results which tend towards presidents being re-elected to second terms and the overall benefits of incumbency – increased access to media and the capacity to set the campaign agenda.
The betting markets support this but in odd ways with inconsistent dividends.
Thus you can back Biden to beat Trump at $2.50 or Trump to beat Biden at $1.83. But if Trump wins the next election a punter only stands to win $1.67 while Biden being sworn in next January offers a $2.60 gain on the dollar invested.
Why the discrepancies? Well, we’re still a long way out. You can still get even money on Bernie Sanders to be the Democratic presidential nominee. Sure, bookies run even the most unlikely of scenarios at long odds seemingly for their own amusement. A fool could still put some money down on Hillary Clinton.
Pandemic frustrates POTUS
But these are unusual times and Donald J. Trump is an unusual president.
It is clear the pandemic has for the time being frustrated the POTUS, preventing him from pump priming his base through rallies.
The televised presidential briefings – seven days a week, often lasting two hours and sometimes more have formed a something of a substitute but it is a very different exercise throwing up very different results.
In these circumstances and with Trump being Trump, there will be the inevitable gaffe, the misstep, the misspeak, all the way to Thursday’s odd remarks into studying the effects of injecting caustic bleaches and carcinogenic UV light “either through the skin which you can do or in some other way.”
It didn’t sound like sarcasm to me. It sounded like a man who was exhausted and not across his brief.
I am not sure who in the Trump camp thought the daily briefings were a good idea. Clearly, they are not. Fireside chats are not Trump’s strong suit.
These events will continue in some form or another, but they will be curtailed, conducted in some abbreviated form.
Trump is suffering from over-exposure. It is the one element of media coverage politicians rarely understand — not being seen can actually be beneficial.
Biden sits in his basement
Look at Biden sitting in the basement of his Wilmington, Delaware home where he makes videos that no one watches and news services shave down to a three second grab if they cover them at all.
Through this period of enforced absence, Biden’s polling has been very solid. Better than Trump’s that’s for sure.
Incumbents don’t have to lose states. Obama did in 2012 but George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan all increased their college votes in their second terms (Reagan carried 40 states in 1980 before thumping the hapless Walter Mondale to carry 49 states in 1984).
In polling, Biden leads in Florida but within margins of error.
The key states in this election besides Florida and arguably North Carolina, are the states Trump won against the odds and the punditry in 2016 – Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa.
Biden leads in polling in all of these states; Ohio and Iowa fractionally but in the state of his birth (with a nod to fans of the US version of The Office, Biden was born in Scranton, PA), he leads by eight per cent. In Michigan, it’s ten points.
Biden has tremendous support among black voters. As we saw in the Democratic primaries pre-pandemic lockdown, black voters provide the ideological rudder to the Democrats, preventing the party from veering off into the deep recesses of the left. Biden took Sanders to the cleaners in the Carolinas, on the back of the black Democrat vote. That is an inconvenient truth for many progressives.
Where might Trump pick up a state? The list is fairly short. Minnesota, Nevada, Arizona, possibly. He trails Biden by 10 points in polling in Virginia, a state whose legislature turned a deep shade of blue 18 months ago. Trump trails Biden by 12 points in Minnesota.
Politics of a pandemic
If there was an election next week in the US, I have little doubt Trump would be beaten. But the election won’t be held until November 3 and that is a long way away. If a week is a long time in politics, six months in the middle of a pandemic can only be measured by geological age.
In this phase of the presidential election campaign and with the shadow of the pandemic cast deep and long over the country, we are in a phase which is essentially a referendum on Trump.
That will change. At some point, Biden must emerge from hibernation and then the game is afoot.
The COVID-19 pandemic brings great uncertainty to this election, to how campaigns might be run, all the way to that most crucial of determinants, voter turnout.
There is no way to determine what the US will look like in six months. Will a second wave of infection, especially in the South and the Midwest occur? Will the country emerge from the pandemic with its economy back and firing in the September quarter?
What if one catches it?
One scenario, not beyond the realms of possibility, is that either man could become infected with the virus. Given their ages – Biden, 77 (he will turn 78 two weeks after the November election), and Trump 73 (he will turn 74 in June), they could become so sick with such a long recovery period, that their candidacy would be in doubt.
One thing many pundits are missing is that Trump got incredibly lucky in 2016, the greatest windfall coming in the drab pant-suited form of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
In the book by political reporters, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign, senior campaign figures toyed with a Clinton campaign slogan, “It’s Her Turn.” That is almost all you need to know about her candidacy.
The global financial crisis had put unemployment figures in double digits. Nine million American homeowners had lost their homes. It was not a time to elect a status quo candidate with no clear agenda and a murky DC past.
There were other bonanzas for Trump. The DNC server hack (regardless of who was responsible, it was acutely embarrassing for Clinton and the Democrats), the reopening of the FBI investigation of Clinton’s emails as Secretary of State two weeks out from polling day and Clinton’s bizarre unwillingness to campaign in Wisconsin and Michigan. With almost eight million votes cast, Clinton lost Wisconsin and Michigan by a combined shortfall of 35,000 votes.
Have the political and economic circumstances in place in 2016 now turned full circle with Americans now wanting a safe if not terribly inspirational pair of hands on the wheel?
Perhaps the real question is, will Trump’s luck hold?
The answer remains in the unknown, but it is deeply wrapped in the one factor that no one can predict: voter turnout.
The pandemic has changed everything. Nothing is certain and wild guesses in op-eds six months out don’t amount to much. The only thing we can know with any confidence is that it’s on and the looming figure of Trump means that right up to election day, it will be impossible to look anywhere else.
More Coverage
Read related topics:Coronavirus
Join the conversation
Nevermind the Middle East, Tony Armstrong’s departure ABC Breakfast’s big story
Despite the abundance of news on Friday morning, ABC News Breakfast spent a large amount of time fawning over Tony Armstrong who has left the program after three years.
Read more
Iran’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown
The supreme leader was left shaken by the assassination of Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, his friend and ally-in-chief. The Islamic Republic has never looked weaker.
Read more