Forsythe et al., ( 2020) also found that the economy had faced broad-based collapse and that it would take more than simply lifting stay-at-home orders to restore the economy. Groshen ( 2020) found that by September of 2020, Covid-19 had produced a deep and abrupt shock to the economy and that the pace of recovery has slowed significantly since June of 2020. The emergence of Covid-19 in late 2019 quickly changed economic and political conditions not only within the US, but worldwide. Footnote 2Īlthough ‘pocketbook issues’ can be one of the main drivers of voters’ decisions of whether to vote and who to vote for, it is possible that other factors such as war, pandemics, or political corruption scandals can rise to the top of voters’ concerns and supplant economic issues as the main driver in voters’ minds. Footnote 1 Similarly, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released at the same time predicted that Donald Trump would win re-election by 3 to 10% points over hypothetical match-ups between Joseph Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Michael Bloomberg, and Elizabeth Warren. In a poll done by SSRS research and released by CNN on Decem53% of respondents had an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump but fully 76% of respondents rated the economy as good while only 22% rated it poorly. In December of 2019, economic conditions, despite voter sentiment about Donald Trump as a person, looked favorable towards then President Trump winning re-election in 2020. In many ways this advice is still repeated every four years during the US presidential election cycles. ![]() In 1992, a political strategist named James Carville worked on Bill Clinton’s presidential election campaign and famously stated, ‘It’s the economy, stupid’, as a reminder to both Bill Clinton and his campaign staff to focus on the economy as a means of winning the election. In other words, without Covid-19, President Trump’s losses within these five states would have been even larger. This paper shows that deaths from COVID-19 at the county level played a small role in demotivating voters to turnout in 2020 to cast their vote for Joe Biden as President. Eventually, the 2020 election came down to the extremely slim margins in three states (Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin) and thin margins in two others (Pennsylvania and Michigan). ![]() However, the 2020 Presidential election was vastly different from past election cycles in that an additional variable, COVID-19, was added to the decision calculus of voters. This is especially true in ‘battleground states’ due to the presence of the Electoral College system where Presidential candidates need only win different combinations of states in order to become President. Therefore, the status of the economy and the country in an election year can be a very important factor in election success for an incumbent President (or his party if an incumbent is not running). ![]() Whether deserved on not, US Presidents often receive the blame or the credit for the nature of the economy and direction of the country.
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