Worst place, worst time: Trump faces virus surge in critical states

Gabe Loiacono is the kind of voter that US President Donald Trump cannot afford to lose. He lives in a pivotal county in an undecided state that is among the few that will decide the presidency.

Loiacono, a college history professor who last voted for a Democrat more than 20 years ago, is voting for Democrat Joe Biden because he believes Trump has completely failed in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“President Trump still does not appear to be taking the pandemic seriously enough. I wish I did, ”Loiacono said. He said he never thought of Trump as “totally bad,” but added: “There are still too many illusions and not enough clear guidance.”

And now the virus is getting worse in the states the president needs most, at the least opportune time. New infections are raging in Wisconsin and other parts of the upper Midwest. In Iowa, polls suggest Trump is in a decisive race with Biden after leading the state by 9.4 percentage points four years ago.

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Trump’s response to the pandemic threatens his grip on Wisconsin, where he won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, said Marquette University Law School Polling Director Charles Franklin.

“Approval of his handling of Covid is the next strongest predictor of voting choice,” behind voters’ party affiliation and their blanket approval of Trump’s performance as president, Franklin said. “And it’s not just a fluke from a single poll.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Sunday that among US states, Wisconsin had the third highest rate of new cases in the previous seven days. Iowa was 10th.

Trump won Wisconsin Winnebago County, which includes Oshkosh, in 2016, after Democratic candidate Barack Obama had won it in 2012. Today, Winnebago is among the top 10 counties where new Covid cases are reported in Wisconsin , according to the data collected. by Johns Hopkins University.

The trend is similar in Iowa. Blue-collar Dubuque County was among the state’s 10 counties with the fastest growing per capita number of cases in the past two weeks. Trump narrowly won the county after Democrats took him in since the 1950s.

In Wisconsin, where polls have shown Biden to have a slight but consistent lead, approval of Trump’s handling of the pandemic fell from 51 percent in March to 41 percent in October, according to a survey by the College of Marquette University Law. That’s a notable decline considering that Trump’s overall approval has fluctuated little and held up into the mid-1940s.

Iowans’ opinion of Trump’s handling of the pandemic is also more negative than positive, according to The Des Moines Register’s Iowa Poll and Monmouth University polls.

The Iowa race remains close, although Monmouth poll director Patrick Murray said Trump’s poor rating in Iowa on handling the pandemic “suggests that in the decision-making process, the coronavirus is what most important and decisive “.

As Trump enters a frenzied last week of campaigning, he continues to hold mass demonstrations that often defy local public health rules. The campaign says supporters are simply exercising their First Amendment rights.

The president also continues to insist that the country is “turning around” the virus, a claim that has drawn reproach from public health experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease specialist.

During his debate with Biden last week, Trump insisted on the virus, despite the increase in cases: “It will go away. He’s leaving. “The comments betrayed the seriousness Trump conveyed during recorded conversations with journalist Bob Woodward in February, when Trump said he” always wanted to downplay it “to avoid creating panic.

On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on CNN: “We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we receive vaccines, therapies and other mitigations.”

On the same day, the White House reported that Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, had tested positive for Covid-19. The vice president has shown no signs of slowing down his torrid campaign schedule.

Republican pollster Ed Goeas compared Meadows’ comments to “waving the white flag.”

“This is how I read it,” Goeas said. “The only hope that appears is that the therapy will make it less deadly and eventually the vaccine will be available to everyone. It seemed to me that they were just trying to make their position seem like that was always their intention. “

Covid-19 cases have also increased in the past two weeks on the battlefields of Midwest Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio, although not as dramatically as in Wisconsin and Iowa, according to data from Johns Hopkins.

The pandemic resonates because it affects all Americans personally and most of them financially, said Terry Madonna, principal of the Franklin and Marshall College Poll and a veteran scholar of Pennsylvania politics.

“It is ubiquitous,” Madonna said. “Maybe it’s not from your own family. But you know someone who had it. You can’t walk away from him on the news and in your own life. “

And voters like Loiacono say they are holding the president to account.

“The government’s job is to lead in times of crisis,” said Loiacono, 44, masked and standing on his porch in Oshkosh, just blocks from Lake Winnebago. “The president has admitted that he spoke much more positively about it because he saw his role as an entertainer. And I understand that, but I think it was the wrong move. “