OROne hundred days before the presidential election, Joe Biden has built a dominant and lasting advantage over Donald Trump, whose path to victory has been greatly reduced in the months since the coronavirus pandemic began.
The president’s fortune seems to be increasingly linked to the trajectory of a public health crisis that he has not managed to contain, with a death toll of more than 145,000 and the economy in crisis.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll this month showed Biden well ahead of Trump, 55% to 40% among registered voters. That was in contrast to March, when Biden and Trump were caught in a close tie as the virus was just beginning to spread.
The same poll found that Trump’s approval ratings had fallen to 39%, about the same proportion of the electorate that approved of his response to the outbreak, while 60% disapproved. Especially troubling for the president is a new series of polls that suggest he is losing his edge in the economy, previously Biden’s greatest vulnerability.
“It is very difficult to imagine a scenario where you can argue in favor of the president’s re-election if unemployment exceeds 10% and there are no signs that the pandemic is under control,” said Michael Steel, a Republican strategist who was an adviser. from Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“The political environment and the economic situation could look very different in 100 days, but if the elections were held today, the former vice president is very likely to win, and quite substantially.”
Polls show Biden ahead in a group of battlefield states that secured Trump’s 2016 victory, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. A survey by Quinnipiac University in Florida, seen as crucial to Trump, found Biden by 13 points.
Biden’s campaign is now looking at an expanded electoral map that could also offer Senate control, challenging Trump in traditionally Republican states like Arizona, where the president has consistently led in state polls, as well as conservative fortresses like Texas, where a New Quinnipiac survey found neck and neck candidates.
Trump has dismissed polls showing him losing as “false,” insistent that he challenged Beltway forecasters in 2016 and is ready to do so again. “I’m not losing,” he insisted during a recent Fox News Sunday interview, when he was presented with the latest online poll showing him behind Biden for eight points.
Political strategists warn that much can, and almost certainly will, change in the coming months, especially in a career so deeply shaped by the pandemic. There is a general expectation that competition will be fought closely, as has been the presidential election for decades in a deeply polarized climate.
At the same time, widespread uncertainty hangs over the security and administration of an election once again threatened by foreign interference and disinformation. The pandemic has raised new concerns about voting procedures, amid Trump’s mounting attacks on mail ballots and unprecedented efforts to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the result in November.
Trump’s prospects likely depend on his ability to persuade Americans that he deserves a second term. However, it remains almost singularly focused on gathering a loyal core of followers, but shrinking. In recent weeks, he has tried to stoke white fear and cultural backlash with an aggressive response to anti-racism protests, a defense of Confederate monuments, and a dark July 4 speech in which he claimed that children are He is teaching them to “hate” the United States.
The approach worked in 2016, but the nation has changed, transformed by the pandemic, the economic crisis, and a growing racial justice movement sparked by the death of George Floyd.
“Trump’s problem is that he wants to run a campaign like it’s 2016, but he’s been responsible for the past four years,” said Heidi Heitkamp, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota.
Heitkamp believes that Trump’s reelection chances are tied to his economic approval rating. Once a bright spot for the president, voter dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy has increased disturbingly as the outbreak worsened in many parts of the country.
Without a strong economy to preside over, he said that Trump “does not have a theory of the case for his reelection.”
In recent weeks, the president has tried to draw attention to criticism of Biden and to frame the election as a choice between an outsider and an insider. But Trump is no longer the 2016 insurgent. He is the president, in the midst of a historic crisis that most Americans say he has mishandled.
Even his supporters see November as a referendum on his presidency. Among Trump voters, 72% said reelecting him was the most important thing to them in this election, according to the Washington Post-ABC News poll. Among Biden voters, 67% said it was more important to defeat the president.
There are indications that the President is beginning to understand the seriousness of the challenges he faces. After weeks of dismissing surges of infections, hospitalizations and deaths in the south and west as the latest “embers” of a pandemic that had largely slowed, Trump abruptly changed his stance.
He encouraged Americans to wear face masks, which he had long resisted, and resumed the White House coronavirus press conference.
On Thursday, Trump announced that the Republican convention in Jacksonville, Florida would be canceled, citing the threat of the virus, which is devastating the state. Democrats have also scrapped plans for a traditional convention, moving its event largely online.
Since becoming the presumptive Democratic candidate in April, Biden has conducted a relatively low-key campaign from his home in Wilmington, Delaware, improving his career standing, even if it has been cut from national attention.
Despite a controversial primary, the party has come together largely behind him, while his campaign has increased fundraising, reducing the president’s once-huge cash advantage.
Biden is also buoyed by polls that show him leading women by a historical margin and building a lead with independents and moderates. Since Trump’s election, white suburban women have fled the Republican party, teaming up with women of color to help Democrats win back the House in 2018. In recent weeks, Trump has attacked Biden in that territory, issuing forceful appeals to the “Suburban Housewives of America”. .
As in 2016, both candidates don’t like it very much, reflecting a deep polarization and disillusionment felt by many Americans. That year, voters who did not like both candidates were strongly moved by Trump. Four years later, polls suggest that voters who don’t like their options, the so-called “enemies,” prefer Biden.
Perhaps even more troubling for Trump is an erosion of support among older voters, who are disproportionately vulnerable to the pandemic. Maintaining dominance with such Americans, who tend to get higher rates and are over-represented in changing states, is critical.
There are risks to Biden, too, particularly as the race intensifies.
Trump supporters are much more excited and committed to voting than Biden supporters. And Democrats are particularly concerned with the support of black, Hispanic, and young voters, who are crucial to building a winning coalition.
“Whoever elects for vice president will tell us a lot about not only what his vision is, but he will also tell us the leadership of the Democratic Party,” said LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, describing it as the “most important” decision Biden will make in the next 100 days.
Biden has promised to name a woman, but Brown believes that choosing a black woman “would know the moment.”
“We are in the midst of a highly racially polarized environment,” he said. “Black people are, frankly, fed up. People are not going to be fine with politics as always. “
Few count Trump. If the pandemic subsides and the economy recovers, it could benefit. A national disaster or a supreme court vacancy could change the dynamics of the race. Trump’s massive ad campaign to define Biden as weak and ineffective could begin to resonate.
“This race is far from over,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump aide. “The president has shown that he can come back from behind sooner.”
However, after years of bending reality to his political will, Trump has apparently accepted that he cannot eliminate the coronavirus.
Ian Sams, a Democratic strategist and adviser to Navigator Research, a left-wing polling firm that tracks public opinion on the coronavirus, has closely monitored the relationship between the president’s approval of the pandemic’s handling and the candidates’ trials.
Most voters view the 2020 election “through the prism of the pandemic,” said Sams, who previously worked on Kamala Harris’ campaign for the Democratic nomination and for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
“Unless something fundamentally changes, and we have 100 days for anything to happen, managing the pandemic will be the central question on voters’ minds when they enter the voting booth in November.”
