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Trump Campaign Hobbled by Virus as Biden Starts to Pull Away
By Mario Parker
Bloomberg, Published October 5, 2020

President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign has seen its candidate, campaign manager and party chairwoman all laid low by Covid-19. He is short on cash, Democrat Joe Biden is pulling away in the polls and his best hope to climb back — the raucous rallies that fueled his 2016 win — is on hold indefinitely as the last month of the race ticks away.

Trump is still dominating the news cycle, but for all the wrong reasons — in the hospital, fighting the virus he sought to effectively erase from the story of his presidency as he appealed to voters for a second term.

Instead, coronavirus dominates the conversation around Trump. His own diagnosis sent him to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Friday, and the virus continues to spread inside the White House, seemingly due to the same indifference to basic precautions that Trump himself has demonstrated for months.

Whether he can participate in the final two presidential debates this month is an open question — though voters hammered Trump’s performance in the first debate, when he interrupted Biden so much the former vice president finally told him, in vain, to shut up.

The litany of political disasters “certainly causes great worry in the closing weeks of a campaign in which the president is behind in polls and fundraising,” said Ed Rollins, a Republican strategist who heads the pro-Trump Great America political action committee.

Of the campaign leaders sidelined by the virus, he said: “These are the decision makers, and normally the workload only intensifies on these individuals in the closing days.”

Among those infected are people most responsible for securing Trump’s re-election: his campaign manager, Bill Stepien; the Republican Party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel; his trusted aide Hope Hicks; his wife, Melania; his debate coach, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and several senators who will help see his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed before Nov. 3.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany tweeted Monday that she, too, had tested positive but had displayed no symptoms. In her statement, she insists she didn’t know about aide Hope Hicks’s positive diagnosis for coronavirus before she held spoke to reporters in the White House briefing room last Thursday.

“It certainly doesn’t help,” said Chris Wilson, a Republican strategist who worked on Senator Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Assuming they all just have mild to moderate symptoms, it still slows things down and makes the campaign less nimble and responsive to news events. And this is 2020, so there will be events.”

‘Operation MAGA’

Trump sought to re-energize his re-election effort, announcing “Operation MAGA,” an effort to flood the campaign trail with top surrogates like Vice President Mike Pence, Trump’s family and others.

Some of those surrogates joined the Washington Sunday shows, offering a sunny view of Trump’s health condition as doctors raised the possibility Trump could leave the hospital on Monday. With the approval of his medical team, according to the White House, Trump conducted a brief motorcade outside Walter Reed hospital to wave to gathered supporters on Sunday.

“None of us is Donald Trump, but we can still deliver Trump’s message,” Steve Cortes, a campaign senior adviser for strategy, said on Fox Business Monday. He pledged to “flood the zone with content,” including digital rallies and in-person events with surrogates as well as videotaped messages from the president until he can resume travel.

Meanwhile, some big donors Trump desperately needs are expressing anger and frustration that he could have prevented all of this by taking the virus more seriously since it emerged as a global threat in January. One donor who has given Trump at least $100,000, Dan Eberhart, said the president’s appearance at a fundraiser on Thursday, after he learned that Hicks had contracted Covid-19, was “reckless.”

All of this comes on the heels of a debate performance so widely panned, a poll released Sunday — taken between Tuesday’s debate and Friday’s news of the president’s infection — found that Biden’s national lead had leaped to 14 points, from 8 before the debate. Biden also has set two records for monthly fundraising in August and September, giving him enough money to dominate Trump on the airwaves.

Biden’s campaign has tried to walk a respectful line, wishing his political rival and the first lady nothing but prayers and warm wishes and saying they would take down negative ads. But Biden didn’t abandon the campaign trail, traveling to Michigan on the same day Trump announced he had tested positive for coronavirus.

Election Turnabout

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. At the beginning of the year, riding high on the strength of the economy and a new trade pact with China, Trump’s re-election seemed likelier than not.

Now, Trump is out of topics he can use immediately to distract from his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 210,000 people in the U.S. and collapsed the strong economy he planned to ride to a second term.

Pence will take on a higher profile and more intense campaign schedule to help fill the void while Trump is hospitalized, as will the president’s two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the campaign announced.

Pence will substitute for Trump at a rally in Peoria, Arizona on Oct. 8, a day after he is scheduled to debate Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harris in Salt Lake City, Utah.

The campaign relies heavily on Trump’s singular ability to energize voters and generate news. The longer he’s off the trail, the more difficult it will be for him to make up ground, Wilson said. That’s even more important given that millions of Americans are already voting early, and by mail.

Campaign officials say they believe investments in what’s called the “ground game” — local offices and networks of paid staff and volunteers who drum up enthusiasm and help get out the vote for Trump — will pay off on Election Day. The campaign has 285 field offices, double the number in 2016, and 2,000 paid staff, also about twice as many as in Trump’s first run.

“Trump needs to make some news and shake up the race further,” Wilson said. “The debates were his best chance to do that and the earned media and excitement his rallies generate were the second best chance. If he’s off the road for a week, or worse, two or more, that really kind of locks things in place where they are.”

And that place is behind.

Biden has been holding steady for months with a 6-7 percentage point lead over Trump nationally, on average. He also has held steady, if smaller leads in many states that are key to either candidates’ victory — Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania among them.

That may change, and not in Trump’s favor. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll released Sunday morning, taken between Tuesday’s debate and Friday’s diagnosis, showed voters sharply turned off by Trump’s performance. He incessantly interrupted and cross-talked Biden, belittled him for wearing a mask and attacked his family. Biden holds a 53% to 39% lead, his largest lead in that poll in the entire campaign.

The concern for Trump is that the poll is a harbinger of a full break among persuadable voters toward Biden.

The debate was “a shock to the system,” said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who directed the poll with Democrat Jeff Horwitt. “The public can be taking a moment to say, ‘What did I just see, and how do I feel about it?’”

Biden now holds a two-to-one advantage with female voters, and Trump’s margin of support among men over 50 dropped from 13 points over Biden to just 1 point, according to the poll.

‘Just a Blip’

But nothing is ever certain with Trump, a politician who has consistently managed to defy expectations. In October 2016, the release of “Access Hollywood” tapes revealing Trump saying crude things about women gave Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton a 14-point lead in one poll.

Biden is better positioned in key states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan than she was at this point her campaign. He also — so far — hasn’t been badgered by Russian hacks of his campaign emails or an FBI investigation.

Some Trump donors and fundraisers contacted by Bloomberg News said they’re continuing to do what they can to support the president’s re-election. “If anything, I think it’s inspiring folks to do more to pitch in,” said Brian Ballard, a lobbyist and member of the RNC’s Finance Committee.

Gaylord T. Hughey Jr., a Texas-based energy lawyer who raises money for Trump Victory, said Trump’s absence from the campaign trail would strengthen his base and supporters, who were already highly motivated to vote.

“This is just a blip,” he said.

This article was originally published here.

New polls feed GOP fears of Biden rout over Trump
By Jonathan Easley
The Hill, Published October 2, 2020

New polls suggest Democratic nominee Joe Biden has a shot at blowing out President Trump in the Electoral College, which would have disastrous repercussions for a Republican Party desperately working to protect its Senate majority.

The surveys were released before Trump and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, extraordinary news with uncertain implications for the race.

The news could pull Trump from the campaign trail at a critical point in the race, but it also raises questions about the health of the president and the stability of his administration.

Before that news, Trump was already having a terrible week at the polls.

A new Quinnipiac University survey of South Carolina, which Trump carried by 14 points in 2016, finds him clinging to a 1-point lead. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is getting swamped on the airwaves by Democrat Jaime Harrison and Senate Republicans have been forced to redirect millions of dollars into that race.

In Alaska, where the president triumphed by 15 points in the last election, Trump and Biden are in a statistical dead heat, according to new data from Harstad Strategic Research. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) is trying to hold on against Democrat Al Gross in a state that hasn’t gone for the Democratic presidential nominee in 56 years.

Those polls come as Biden on Wednesday took a small lead in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls in Iowa, where Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is fighting for her political life against Democrat Theresa Greenfield. Trump carried the state by 9 points in 2016.

The polls show the presidential race is a toss-up in Georgia, a historically red state with two competitive Senate races this cycle.

A new post-debate survey from CNBC released on Thursday put Biden’s national lead at 13 points over Trump, a landslide margin. Republicans — many of whom were appalled by the president’s debate showing on Tuesday — are growing worried that Trump will lose in a rout and take the GOP’s Senate majority with him.

“It’s concerning,” said John Pudner, a veteran Republican campaign operative who now runs the nonpartisan group Take Back Our Republic. “I think Trump’s polling and his miscues at the debate are especially a cause for concern in those tight races in Georgia, South Carolina and Iowa … it’s making his reelection tougher, and it’s making those Senate races tougher to win.”

The difference between a Biden blowout and a narrow Trump victory could be very small.

Even with the cascade of bad recent polling for Trump, the president still has a 20 percent chance of winning the election, according to the FiveThirtyEight model.

That’s not far off from the 28 percent chance FiveThirtyEight gave Trump in 2016, when he went on to win most of the battleground states and pulled off narrow victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

The president won the Electoral College 304 to 227 against Hillary Clinton.

If Trump can defend the bulk of the 2016 map, and keep Biden to only winning back two of three former “blue wall” states, he’ll win reelection.

“As the parties continue to re-align, with some Southern suburbs becoming more swing but the old ‘blue wall’ Democratic states moving right … the competitive territory is going to be broader than it was in 2016,” said GOP pollster Chris Wilson. “But that doesn’t mean a blowout is necessarily more likely, it just means there are fewer states that aren’t competitive from the start.”

Still, the polling is much worse for Trump in 2020 than it ever was for him in 2016, when the widespread polling miss could mostly be ascribed to a failure of imagination on behalf of the analysts who interpret polling data for a living. Now he faces worse polls, and he is likely to be pulled from the campaign trail.

Biden leads Trump by 7.2 points nationally in the RealClearPolitics average. His lead has been mostly steady going back to last year. At this point in 2016, Trump only trailed Clinton by 2.7 points. He ended up losing the national vote by about 2 points.

The Democratic nominee’s lead is outside the margin of error in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He has led in almost every poll of Arizona this cycle. Florida and North Carolina, two states the president won narrowly in 2016, are toss-ups.

Biden is also running close with Trump in traditionally red states, such as Texas, Georgia, South Carolina and Alaska, and in states the president won easily in 2016, such as Ohio and Iowa.

In 2016, independents, suburban voters and voters who disliked both candidates broke late for Trump. Some Democrats stayed home or voted third party.

Polls in 2020 show Biden leading big among independents, suburban voters and people who dislike both candidates. It does not appear third parties will be a significant portion of the vote in 2020.

According to the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, 279 Electoral College votes are already leaning toward Biden, more than the 270 he needs to win. There are 179 electoral votes leaning toward Trump.

That leaves 80 electoral votes up for grabs in Arizona, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina and Florida. It would not be surprising to see Biden won some or all of those states. A couple of states where the polls are close, such as South Carolina and Alaska, are still categorized as leaning toward Trump in that model.

South Carolina could be a test case to determine whether Trump experiences a full collapse. The state has not gone for the Democratic nominee in more than 40 years.

Katon Dawson, the former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, said he’s seen private polling showing Trump ahead by 9 points, with Graham fighting for his political life in a statistical tie.

Dawson said he doesn’t believe Trump will lose in South Carolina. But he said it’s concerning that the president appears to have shed 7 points since 2016 in a ruby-red state. Republicans are worried Trump’s weakness, coupled with the enormous money and energy flowing toward Harrison, might cost them Graham’s Senate seat.

“Trump’s newness has worn off now and the disappointment I’m hearing from Republicans is that he could have moved the needle in these Senate races if he’d just taken apart Biden at the debate in a normal way,” Dawson said.

Chip Felkel, a veteran GOP operative in South Carolina, said he was “surprised” by the Quinnipiac University poll showing Trump with only a 1-point lead over Biden.

“Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I’d see a presidential race at 1 point here,” Felkel said. “But maybe my home state will surprise and there’s a level of frustration with all of the chaos. The schtick is old and if it’s old in South Carolina, that doesn’t bode well.”

But Republicans in states Trump won easily in 2016 are largely skeptical that Biden is in position to win them back.

Craig Robinson, a conservative political analyst in Iowa, said it’s no surprise the race has tightened after Trump’s shocking 9-point victory in the Hawkeye State in 2016.

Robinson said it’s possible the president is being underestimated once again. He believes the Supreme Court fight will turn out Republicans that otherwise might have thought about staying home out of disgust over the president’s behavior.

“A lot of times in presidential elections people need an excuse to support the nominee,” he said. “Even if you’re disturbed by Trump’s behavior, even if you question his leadership abilities in the middle of the pandemic, the Supreme Court brings things into focus. It’s the ultimate excuse to say you might not like everything about Trump but you’ll vote for him because the Supreme Court is really important.”

This article was originally published here.

Trump’s Attacks On Hunter Biden Have Gone Nowhere, But He Can’t Let Them Go
By Nidhi Prakash & Henry J. Gomez
BuzzFeed News, Published September 29, 2020

President Donald Trump has long tried to press a reelection strategy that turns “Where’s Hunter?” — an attack on Joe Biden via his son — into the “lock her up” of 2020. It just hasn’t really worked.

Trump and his followers used to spend considerable energy taunting Hunter Biden at campaign rallies and on Twitter, eager to make an issue out of his work overseas and raise suspicions that his father, the former vice president, somehow used his influence to help enrich his son.

Then for months, the strategy faded as Trump searched for an attack that would stick to Biden, who has remained persistently ahead of the president in national polls and many battleground state polls. But with the first debate Tuesday night, and a new report from Senate Republicans that relies on baseless old allegations and debunked theories, Trump appears eager to bring Hunter back for one last try.

“The biggest thing going on the internet is exactly this,” Trump insisted of Hunter from the White House on Sunday, minutes after the New York Times published deep reporting about the president’s taxes. At his Saturday campaign rally in Pennsylvania and in response to other questions since, he’s been clear that he intends for Biden’s son to be part of their Tuesday debate.

Some Trump allies, though, aren’t sure revamping attacks on the younger Biden is a winning strategy.

Republican strategists who spoke with BuzzFeed News don’t see much of an advantage for the Trump campaign in raising Hunter and his work in Ukraine. It could be a deflection point, as it was on Sunday. Or it could be a move designed to trip up Biden, who can quickly get angry and defensive when his family is attacked. But the strategists also believe there are reasons the attacks had, until recently, gone away. They were not very effective in defining Biden or weakening his standing with voters. The Hunter issue has been lapped in importance by the pandemic, a rickety economy, and anti-racism protests often used by Republicans to stoke fear about the Black Lives Matter movement among white suburban voters.

“If he’s going to make Biden play defense, I’d rather he make Biden play defense on the $4 trillion tax increase, on refusing to stand with law enforcement, on his position on the Supreme Court,” said Matt Mackowiak, founder of the Republican political consulting group Potomac Strategy and chair of the Travis County GOP in Texas. “All those issues, I think, are more likely to yield real benefit for him than the shady stuff around Hunter.”

Mackowiak said that while he thinks the allegations against Hunter have a legitimate basis, the real value of bringing them up again isn’t a question of what he did or didn’t do — it would be to point to the idea that Joe Biden is a political insider.

“Joe Biden’s in a difficult spot on all this because it’s one of his children, right. So it’s sensitive to begin with. Hunter’s obviously had a difficult time. He doesn’t want to probably add to that in any way. He obviously lost his oldest son, so it’s even more sensitive and difficult,” said Mackowiak. “In terms of the value, though, I think it goes to this argument that Biden is an insider. To this whole, you know, Scranton Joe, middle-class Joe, working-class Joe — that really doesn’t square with what we’ve seen over the last 10 years.”

Others said they don’t see compelling evidence of any misconduct on the former vice president’s part, and since there isn’t a clear connection between Biden and his son’s work, they think rekindling the issue now might not be the most helpful course for the Trump campaign.

“We all already knew that,” said Chris Wilson, a pollster who helped guide Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign, referring to the information in the report released last week by Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley. “But it doesn’t seem that anyone has the perfect smoking gun of [Joe] Biden altering policy to benefit Hunter, so it’s a mixed bag.”

Wilson said polling on the Hunter issue in February, during the Democratic primaries, showed that voters were split on the matter, largely along party lines. A Politico/Morning Consult poll that month found that while most voters surveyed believed Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian gas company was inappropriate, a plurality of respondents said it wouldn’t make a difference in their vote. Nevertheless, Wilson said, it’s “definitely an issue that Republicans should push on and give Biden and his team the opportunity to make a mistake, but without the clear link between Biden’s actions and Hunter’s, it’s more likely to be a marginal issue than a game changer.”

Trump has risked and invested a lot for a marginal issue. His eagerness to coax Ukrainian officials into investigating Joe and Hunter Biden triggered his impeachment earlier this year. Rather than defining Biden, Trump world spent considerable time at first introducing voters to his son and leveling accusations that the media quickly determined to be false or misleading.

Even so, the Trump campaign and Republicans were so relentless on the issue in the lead-up to the Democratic primaries that even Democratic voters at Biden events were concerned about how the former vice president would handle the issue if Trump continually brought it up during the general election. Some voters drew comparisons to how Trump damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign through a hyped-up and repeated focus on her use of a private email server. Those attacks had a role in voters’ beliefs in 2016 that Clinton was corrupt or untrustworthy.

At times, it seemed Biden was struggling to quiet the noise drummed up by the Trump campaign, despite the allegations having little substance. He would parry questions about Hunter by vowing that his children would not have White House jobs — an attempt to deflect attention to the senior roles that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, have in the administration.

At a primary debate last October, Biden danced around a question about the propriety of Hunter’s work overseas while he was vice president, saying he and his son had done nothing wrong. On a few occasions in the following months, Biden lost his temper when questioned about his son by voters and reporters. But instead of damaging Biden, his aggressive defense of his family seemed to generally play well with Democratic voters in the early primary and caucus states.

Once Biden became the clear Democratic nominee, the Hunter-themed attacks began to recede as the Trump campaign began working to characterize the former vice president — again without substantiating evidence — as mentally unfit for office and razzing him for riding out the early days of the coronavirus crisis in his Delaware basement. Trump’s own tweets and comments attacking Hunter, which came almost daily late last year and into the start of 2020, had almost entirely disappeared until this weekend. There were exceptions: a campaign ad in June, the occasional mention at a rally. By the time of the Democratic National Convention last month, the notion of Hunter being a true liability was so remote that he appeared in a video introducing his father. At the Republican convention the following week, Hunter was mostly an afterthought, the focus of only one speech, from former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi.

In response to questions from BuzzFeed News about why the campaign scaled back on the attack line in recent months and why it’s raising the issue again in recent days, Trump campaign deputy national press secretary Courtney Parella repeated several of the discredited claims but did not say why the president is aggressively resurrecting the allegations now.

“The corruption of the Biden family knows no bounds, and it calls into question whether Joe Biden or foreign interests would be leading our nation if he were elected,” she said.

Last week, after the Republicans attempted to revive the story through the Johnson–Grassley report, Biden campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to BuzzFeed News that the suggestion that the Democratic nominee had done anything corrupt to help his son in Ukraine was a “hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory.”

Bates referred to conservative political commentator John Solomon, who originated the claims about Biden and corruption early last year, in columns published in the Hill. The outlet reviewed his work this February and concluded that many of his claims were inaccurate and that his allegations against Biden had no factual basis.

“Yet, to pursue it, Donald Trump committed unprecedented abuses of national security policy — triggering his own impeachment; Rudy Giuliani embraced Russian agents and had his closest collaborators indicted; and Ron Johnson diverted a crucial Senate committee away from the failing pandemic response in order to become the first sitting Senator to subsidize a foreign influence operation with American taxpayer dollars,” Bates continued.

He added, “In their sickening attempts to fabricate wrongdoing on the part of Joe Biden for delivering a key anti-corruption victory that Republicans — including Sen. Johnson — supported, they came to redefine political corruption in the United States themselves.”

The media’s coverage of the Senate report emphasized the lack of new or damning information. Trump’s campaign issued an overstated press release that also chided journalists for not calling more attention to the findings.

“American journalists have a responsibility to relentlessly question Joe Biden about all of this, in detail, and to call out his attempts to cover up this potentially criminal activity,” Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign’s communications director, said in a press release that was part victory lap, part media critique, following the Senate’s report. “Regardless of whether Biden is forced to face the music, this is further evidence that if Joe Biden wins, China and many other foreign interests with a financial stake in the Biden family win too.”

Jim Renacci, a former congressional representative from Ohio who aligned with Trump during an unsuccessful Senate bid in 2018, said in a telephone interview with BuzzFeed News that Hunter’s lucrative overseas work while his father was vice president is the type of issue that can outrage a voter who is struggling financially.

“If Hunter Biden was not the son of the vice president, he probably would not have gotten these appointments and positions,” Renacci said. “The question is: Did he do anything illegal?”

After reading a summary of the Johnson–Grassley report last week, Renacci wasn’t convinced. “I don’t think it reflects that he did anything illegal.”

Mackowiak, the Republican consultant, echoed one of the points raised by Murtaugh: Without the issue being picked up more widely by the press again, he said, it’s not likely to do the kind of damage that Hillary Clinton’s emails did to her campaign.

“I mean, right now, I think Republicans are going to talk about this probably in the conservative and right-wing media, but it’s hard to see how it kind of breaks out beyond that bubble,” he said.

He added that late last year and early this year, the Trump campaign’s messaging around Hunter was “relevant and useful in a way that it’s not now” because impeachment was the biggest story of the time.

“Look, do I think this is a really valuable attack area of attack? Probably not,” Mackowiak said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not legitimate. I think it’s absolutely legitimate. But, you know, I think they’ve got better opportunities.”

This article was originally published here.

Tightening polls in key swing states raise pressure on Biden
By Jonathan Easley
The Hill, Published September 25, 2020

New polls show former Vice President Joe Biden running strong in states President Trump must win to secure a second term, but the race is close in Florida and tightening in Arizona, raising pressure on the Democratic nominee ahead of the first presidential debate.

Biden has several pathways to victory, with new surveys showing him neck and neck with Trump in traditionally red states, such as Texas and Georgia, and in states Trump won comfortably in 2016, like Iowa and Ohio.

The Democratic nominee continues to run up the score over Trump in national polls. Biden’s lead in the former “blue wall” states has been consistent and comfortable for months now.

There are glimmers of hope for Republicans that Trump could prevail in enough of the core battleground states to win the Electoral College.

Biden’s once formidable lead in Florida has vanished and the state appears to be a toss-up once again. The polls are all over the place in Arizona, although several recent surveys show the candidates within 1 or 2 points of each other. North Carolina has long been headed for a photo finish.

If Trump holds on to those three states, and if he doesn’t fumble away Texas, Georgia, Iowa or Ohio, Biden would have to run the table in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, giving the Democratic nominee little room for error as the candidates prepare to go head-to-head in the first general election debate.

“We’ve seen a few surveys that reflect a tightening race, but the scale of the tightening is unclear,” said David Winston, a veteran GOP pollster. “For the Trump campaign, it is encouraging to see some positive movement heading into the debate. Having said that, they’ll need more than what they’ve seen so far.”

The polling has been erratic in Arizona, which has only gone for the Democratic nominee once in the past 60 years.

Biden has led in all but a handful of the surveys released this year and FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver gives the Democratic nominee a 65 percent chance of carrying the state.

But Biden’s lead in Arizona has shrunk from 5.7 points in the RealClearPolitics average on Sept. 10 to 3.2 points now.

Recent polls from Reuters-Ipsos, Monmouth University and CBS News have put the race between 1 point and 3 points, with Biden holding the slight advantage.

Recent surveys from The New York Times and CNBC show Biden leading comfortably, in the 6- to 9-point range.

An ABC News-Washington Post survey of likely voters released this week is turning heads, finding Trump ahead in Arizona by 1 point. That survey found Trump with a 15-point lead on the economy, and Biden holding only a 4-point advantage on who would better handle the coronavirus.

Election analysts are waiting for more data, wary of that poll being an outlier.

“I see nothing to indicate that Biden’s modest but stable lead has disappeared,” said Mike O’Neil, a veteran Arizona pollster. “Should a second quality poll materialize that shows otherwise, I would reconsider this judgment.”

The data is clearer in Florida, where Biden’s lead in the RealClearPolitics average has shrunk from 8.4 points in late July to 1.3 points now.

Trump has only led in two major surveys of the Sunshine State since April, but several recent polls have found Trump and Biden tied in the state.

The latest ABC News-Washington Post poll finds Trump leading Biden by 4 points among likely voters. Biden is dragged down in the poll because of his lower-than-expected support among Hispanics, a persistent concern for the Biden campaign.

The poll found Trump with an 11-point advantage on the economy in Florida, while Biden leads by 5 points on the pandemic.

“The situation is definitely better for Trump than it was in July, but he still has a tough road,” said Chris Wilson, a Republican pollster. “Trump has strengthened his position with seniors as COVID has faded a bit as a top concern, and that, coupled with some inroads with Hispanic men, has pulled both Florida and Arizona much closer. … On the other hand, we’re still talking about North Carolina, Georgia and even Texas as potential battlegrounds.”

Biden’s red state strength is alarming for Republicans. The president cannot afford to lose any of the states he won easily in 2016, which include Iowa, Ohio, Texas and Georgia.

A New York Times-Siena College poll released Thursday found Biden leading by 3 points in Iowa, which Trump carried by 9 points in 2016. A Des Moines Register poll, largely viewed as the gold standard in Iowa, found the race is tied, although a new Monmouth University survey found Trump ahead by 6 points in the Hawkeye State.

Georgia increasingly looks like a pure toss-up. Two of the three surveys of Georgia released this month found the race is tied.

A new Quinnipiac University survey released Thursday found Biden with a 1-point lead in Ohio, which Trump carried by 8 points in 2016. The poll found Trump leading by 5 points in Texas, though other polls have found a tighter race in the Lone Star State.

The new polls show a stark gender divide, with women propelling Biden into contention in states Trump must win. The Des Moines Register poll found Trump leading by 21 points among men and Biden leading by 20 points among women.

Nationally, and in the former “blue wall” states, the race has been remarkably static, with Biden leading clearly and consistently throughout the cycle.

Surveys released this week from Marquette University and Quinnipiac University found Biden with a 10-point national lead. He leads by 7 points nationally in the RealClearPolitics average. The president has not been within 7 points of Biden since May.

“The stability plays in Biden’s favor,” said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School Poll.

Analysts say Trump could lose the national vote by 3 or 4 points and still squeeze out an Electoral College victory. But they say it would be a near-unimaginable statistical anomaly for Trump to win the White House after losing the popular vote by 7 points or more. Clinton beat Trump by about 2 points nationally in 2016.

The president also faces a difficult path to repeating his stunning 2016 victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Biden has led in every major poll of Pennsylvania going back to June and currently leads by an average of 4.1 points. A Franklin & Marshall survey of Pennsylvania released Thursday found Biden ahead by 6 points among likely voters, although a University of Wisconsin-Madison survey found his lead shrank from 9 points to 5 points over the past month.

Biden leads by 5.2 points in the RealClearPolitics average of Michigan. Only the Trafalgar Group, which accounts for so-called shy Trump voters, has found Trump with a lead in the Wolverine State this cycle.

Wisconsin has emerged as Biden’s strongest polling state in the Midwest, to the surprise of many Democrats. Biden leads by 6.6 points in the RCP average, with a CNBC-Change Research survey this week finding him ahead by 9 points.

“For this to be a real toss-up type of election, Trump probably needs the national picture to move another 3 to 4 points toward him and for North Carolina, Georgia and Texas polling to be more like Trump ahead by 4 points, with Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania getting into the 2 to 3 point range,” said Wilson.

This article was originally published here.

Miscues in 2016 inform presidential polling data in 2020
By Eric Avidon
TechTarget, Published September 16, 2020

Based on presidential polling data and predictive analytics models, Hillary Clinton was expected to defeat Donald Trump in 2016.

Easily.

Much of the presidential polling data and predictive modeling, however, failed to get it right and Trump was elected president. Polling organizations didn’t include enough non-college educated voters in their data, and too few polls were run in the days before the election in the states that wound up determining the outcome.

Four years later, pollsters have learned important lessons in order to include the voters they missed in 2016 who ultimately swung the election, and presidential polling data is being collected differently in 2020 than it was before the last presidential election.

But 2020, with a global pandemic hitting the United States harder than any other country and now vast swaths of the West Coast consumed by wildfires, is different also than any year. And whether the changes made to presidential election polling will lead to more accurate predictions this time around won’t be known until the final polls are conducted before the election and the votes are counted.

…

Matthew Knee, director of analytics at political consulting firm WPA Intelligence, said that while polls got the popular vote correctly, they failed to catch what was happening in the states that swung the election, leading to poor predictive models.

“People focused on national polls, and this is not a national popular-vote election,” he said. “The polls were pretty darn close on the popular vote, but what they missed was Trump pulling off narrow wins in states where there was a lot less polling. And in many of these places Trump really did pull ahead right at the end.”

For example, in Michigan, the Republican National Committee’s model predicted a Trump victory, but that model was done after most polls had been completed, Knee added.

See the full article here.

Democrats build big edge in early voting
By Alex Isenstadt
Politico, Published September 10, 2020

Democrats are amassing an enormous lead in early voting, alarming Republicans who worry they’ll need to orchestrate a huge Election Day turnout during a deadly coronavirus outbreak to answer the surge.

The Democratic dominance spreads across an array of battleground states, according to absentee ballot request data compiled by state election authorities and analyzed by Democratic and Republican data experts. In North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Democrats have a roughly 3-to-1 advantage over Republicans in absentee ballot requests. In Florida — a must-win for President Donald Trump — the Democratic lead stands at more than 700,000 ballot requests, while the party also leads in New Hampshire, Ohio and Iowa.

Even more concerning for Republicans, Democrats who didn’t vote in 2016 are requesting 2020 ballots at higher rates than their GOP counterparts. The most striking example is Pennsylvania, where nearly 175,000 Democrats who sat out the last race have requested ballots, more than double the number of Republicans, according to an analysis of voter rolls by the Democratic firm TargetSmart.

Though the figures are preliminary, they provide a window into Democratic enthusiasm ahead of the election and offer a warning for Republicans. While Democrats stockpile votes and bring in new supporters, Trump’s campaign is relying on a smooth Election Day turnout operation at a time when it’s confronting an out-of-control pandemic and a mounting cash crunch.

“A ballot in is a ballot in, and no late-campaign message or event takes it out of the count,” said Chris Wilson, a GOP pollster who specializes in data and analytics. “Bottom line is that means that Biden is banking a lead in the mail and more of the risk of something going wrong late is born by Republicans because our voters haven’t voted yet.”

Republicans acknowledge Democrats have established a lead, though some stressed it was early and compared it to a basketball team winning the opening tipoff. Trump aides argue that the Democratic advantage will make little difference in the end, saying the opposing party is merely front-loading voters who otherwise would have voted on Nov. 3.

They also note that while Trump has repeatedly bashed mail-in voting — virtually ensuring that most of his supporters cast ballots in-person on Election Day — Democrats are placing a heavy emphasis on it. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last month showed that nearly half of Biden’s supporters planned to vote by mail, compared with just about one-tenth of Trump supporters.

The Trump team points to special congressional elections earlier this year in red-tinted New York and Wisconsin districts where Republicans trailed in absentee voting but ended up with a substantial advantage among voters who cast ballots on Election Day, giving them wins in both contests.

“The majority of our voters prefer to vote in-person. So, we expect to be well behind on absentee requests as Democrats have made it their mission to push for an all-mail election that brings fraud and chaos into the system. You’ll see Democrats predominantly vote by mail, and our voters will come out in droves to vote in-person,” said Mike Reed, a Republican National Committee spokesperson.

But the data also shows that Democrats are attracting new supporters in small but potentially significant numbers in states they narrowly lost in 2016.

In Pennsylvania, which Trump won by just 44,000 votes four years ago, Democrats have built a lead of nearly 100,000 ballot requests from voters who didn’t participate in the 2016 election but are preparing to vote by mail this year, according to TargetSmart’s figures. In Michigan, where Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes (and where voters do not register by party), the firm’s model shows that Democratic-aligned voters have a nearly 20,000-person advantage among non-2016 voters signing up to receive ballots. In Wisconsin, which Trump won by 22,000 votes, Democratic-leaning voters who skipped 2016 have made nearly 10,000 more requests for this election than their GOP counterparts.

Republicans are also encouraging supporters to vote absentee. Through telephone calls, digital advertising and mailers, they have prodded Trump backers to vote early or by mail. The pro-Trump outside group America First Action, meanwhile, has been following up with voters to ensure they are turning in their ballots.

Yet Trump — much to the frustration of senior Republicans — has undermined those efforts with repeated attacks on mail-in voting. The president has used his recent public appearances and his Twitter feed to savage voting by mail as a process that can’t be trusted.

“It’s a case of what Trump actually says mattering a lot more than what his campaign does. The campaign is working hard to get absentees requested and, soon, returned; but Trump bashing mail voting repeatedly makes strong Republicans much less likely to do it,” Wilson, the GOP pollster, said.

Democrats, who were widely criticized for running a lackluster turnout operation four years ago, say they are capitalizing on a wave of anti-Trump energy to bank ballots. The party used its convention to press early voting, with prominent figures like former first lady Michelle Obama imploring people to cast ballots as soon as possible.

They point to Florida as a major bright spot. Democrats lead Republicans in vote-by-mail requests 2.1 million to 1.4 million, according to a GOP consultant who is tracking the figures. At this same point in 2016, Democrats trailed Republicans in requests.

“While Trump is busy kneecapping Republican efforts to sign up his supporters to vote by mail with debunked claims about absentee voting, Democrats have a massive grassroots army focused on turning out voters early and on Election Day, and we’re already seeing strong results and real energy — including among first-time voters,” said Michael Gwin, a Biden campaign spokesperson.

There have been a few rays of hope for Republicans, however. In Georgia, a competitive state with two key Senate races, the party has a roughly 55,000-vote edge over Democrats.

But Republicans acknowledge they will be largely leaning on a well-organized Election Day turnout program they’ve spent years developing — one that is widely seen as superior to the one Democrats have built.

“We expect that,” said Reed, the RNC spokesperson, “to be a huge difference-maker.”

This article was originally published here.

As NFL reopens amid altered landscape, Trump resumes attacks on players who demonstrate for racial justice
By David Nakamura
The Washington Post, Published September 9, 2020

President Trump’s attempt to show that the nation is recovering from the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic will clash head-on Thursday with his denunciations of social justice demonstrations when the National Football League kicks off its season in prime time.

Trump has lobbied heavily for sports leagues to restart despite the threat of the virus, but his demands have been incongruous when it comes to the NFL, an $8.8 billion juggernaut whose television ratings dwarf all competitors’.

Ahead of the season opener between the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans, the president and his allies have resumed their long-standing bashing of NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem to call attention to police brutality affecting communities of color.

Four years after Trump first denounced quarterback Colin Kaepernick for his silent demonstration, shocking scenes this summer of police violently subduing and, at times, killing or severely injuring African Americans have ignited mass demonstrations — shifting public opinion in favor of protesters, according to polls, and prompting sports league executives to take stronger action in support of the social movement.

Yet Trump and his allies have continued to eviscerate the NFL, as the president attempts to tie his criticism of the players to his broader law-and-order reelection message against the protests, which have been violent in some cities. In an interview with sports talk host Clay Travis last month, Trump said he hopes the league does not restart games if the players aren’t standing during the anthem.

“Football is officially dead — so much for ‘America’s sport.’ Goodbye NFL . . . I’m gone,” Eric Trump, the president’s son, wrote in a tweet on Monday, responding to a report that a Dallas Cowboys player said the team’s ownership had given the “green light” to protests.

Their posture contrasts with a widespread sense around the NFL, and among Democratic strategists, that the president is in a weakened position compared with four years ago, and that his efforts to drag the league into another debate in the culture wars could backfire politically with less than two months to go before the election.

“President Trump stands with our brave soldiers and patriots who proudly stand for our national anthem and great flag, not those who choose to disrespect it by kneeling or elect to needlessly cover this demonstration — and the American people agree with him,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. The NFL declined to comment on the issue.

The mass social justice demonstrations after the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed in police custody in Minneapolis in late May, have resulted in a pronounced shift in public opinion in support of the protests and the players who are speaking out.

An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll in July found that 52 percent of registered voters nationally said it was appropriate for an athlete to kneel during the national anthem to protest racial inequality, while 45 percent said it was not appropriate. That compared with 43 percent in 2018 who said kneeling was appropriate and 54 percent who said it was not.

Trump is in “some ways less relevant,” said Joe Lockhart, who served as press secretary under President Bill Clinton and worked as executive vice president for communications at the NFL from 2016 to 2018. “The country and the conversation have moved from where the president is, and I don’t know if anyone [at the NFL] will be sitting and monitoring his Twitter feed.”

If the NFL’s television ratings are strong despite Trump’s admonitions, Lockhart said, “it’s a sign of weakness rather than strength for him. If he’s saying, ‘Do not watch the NFL,’ and the NFL sets a record, are people going to say, ‘Trump has lost his mojo’?”

Republican strategists countered that the president’s message on the NFL is consistent with his argument that the violent elements of the social justice demonstrations have escalated dangerously in major cities. Siding with law enforcement, Trump has promoted scenes of violence on his Twitter account and fanned racial grievances. Recent clashes between his supporters and protesters in Kenosha, Wis., and Portland, Ore., turned deadly.

Republican pollster Chris Wilson, chief executive of WPA Intelligence, said Trump’s stand against the NFL protests motivates the GOP base and appeals to suburban and older voters who have “grown increasingly concerned that initially legitimate protests have now turned into an excuse for . . . widespread rioting, violence and destruction.”

Trump ally Robert Jeffress, pastor of a megachurch in Dallas, acknowledged that “there is more tolerance for the protests today than four years ago.” But he added: “I still think the president speaks for millions of Americans when he says the flag and the anthem ought to be honored.”

The NFL struggled over how to address the protests and Trump’s criticism in 2016 and 2017. Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers after the 2016 season and was not signed by another team. He has accused league owners of blackballing him over his political views.

After Floyd’s death in May, however, the NFL quickly pledged $250 million over a decade to address social issues. Other leagues also have acted. Players in Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League have demonstrated during the anthem as their seasons have resumed, and the National Basketball Association has prominently embraced the Black Lives Matter movement. NASCAR, which Trump has courted because of its conservative-leaning fan base, banned the Confederate flag at its races.

Speaking to reporters last week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell noted the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha and offered his “heartfelt prayers” to victims of “police violence, systemic racism and persistent inequality.” He said the league would play “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” commonly known as the Black national anthem, before each game.

“I’d much rather be the NFL after George Floyd than before George Floyd,” said Vada Manager, a former Nike executive and founder of Manager Global Consulting Group. The league’s unity on the issue, and the public’s pent-up desire for televised sports amid the pandemic, he said, “is a pretty strong bulwark against the president having an impact to say the games shouldn’t be played because of the protests.”

The shift in public perception over the NFL protests was made clear during Trump’s interview at the White House last month with Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, who told Trump that he initially had been critical of Kaepernick.

But Portnoy suggested that his thinking had changed because “we don’t want them looting and doing all the stuff they’re doing. To me, that’s a silent protest that is far better than going out on the streets and creating crime.”

Trump responded that people could run for public office instead.

“You get groups together and there can be very friendly ways of doing it,” Trump said. He then shifted to blaming violence at protests in Portland on the city’s “radical left” mayor.

Trump’s conservative allies have continued to echo his message. Travis, the sports talk host, this week praised the NFL’s virus safety protocols but said he is “concerned they’re going to blow it with social justice issues and way overdoing it.”

Travis also pointed to the makers of the popular Madden NFL video game decision to include Kaepernick in its 2020 edition, as though he were still an active player.

“This is an example of trying to make the woke community happy,” Travis said. “This is madness. And this, by the way, is one reason I think Donald Trump is starting to surge” in some swing-state polls against Biden.

Biden’s campaign has argued that Trump’s mishandling of the virus, which has killed more than 187,000 Americans, has deprived fans of the ability to attend games safely or even watch them on television, in cases where games were canceled.

State Rep. Joe Tate of Michigan, a Biden surrogate and former NFL practice squad player, said the public is souring on the president’s attacks on the players.

“I believe that they’re understanding and seeing some underlying reasons as to why you’re having protests and having these conversations around race, around issues of police brutality,” Tate said. “People are saying, ‘Hey, they have a point. They should be heard.’ 

This article was originally published here.

Trump attacks take a toll on Black Lives Matter support
By Laura Barrón-López
Politico, Published September 2, 2020

President Donald Trump has spent weeks attacking the Black Lives Matter movement, and it’s moving the polls — though not necessarily in a way that boosts his electoral chances.

Voters’ favorable views of the Black Lives Matter movement has dropped by 9 percentage points since June, including a 13-point dip among Republicans, according to new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. The shift comes after the recent police shooting of another Black man: Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis., last week.

Trump’s recent emphasis on the protests in cities like Kenosha and Portland, Ore., isn’t exactly to his political benefit. Despite Trump’s attempts to cast himself as the law-and-order candidate since George Floyd’s killing in May, the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows more voters trust former Vice President Joe Biden over Trump to handle public safety, 47 percent to 39 percent.

Voters also prefer Biden on race relations by a 19-point margin. Though a narrow majority of voters still view the Black Lives Matter movement favorably, bipartisan support has eroded over the past two months, as Trump has encouraged police violence against protesters, called the Black Lives Matter movement a “symbol of hate,” “discriminatory,” “Marxist” and “bad for Black people.” This week, Trump has tried to pin blame on Biden for violence in American cities.

The dip in support for Black Lives Matter, reflected across multiple polls in recent weeks, doesn’t come as a surprise to activists nor Democratic pollsters who expected Republican backlash to the movement’s newfound support. Favorability for Black Lives Matter dropped from 61 percent support in June to 52 percent now, according to the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted Friday through Sunday.

“This is the direct effect of the strategy of Donald Trump and Fox News,” said veteran Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher. “The movement to a certain extent, over the last month or so, had been losing ground in controlling the narrative.”

The protests were “resoundingly successful” in creating an “inflection point” around racism, Belcher said. But the drop in favorability, he continued, comes as Trump increasingly describes the protests as “violence” and “anarchy,” rather than about police brutality and racial injustice.

“That is a huge problem for Donald Trump — if he’s in fact trying to be the safety and law and order candidate, and he’s losing in the public mind on that front,” Belcher said.

Since Blake was shot seven times in the back by police last month, protests have continued in the state, and riots have resulted in businesses burned to the ground or vandalized. Last week, a white teenager, Kyle Rittenhouse, allegedly shot three protesters, killing two, during the third night of demonstrations in Kenosha. Trump has not condemned Rittenhouse — who on social media promoted “Blue Lives Matter” and support for the president — despite the criminal charges against him, and the president has largely remained silent on the shooting of Blake. During his visit to Kenosha on Tuesday, Trump did not meet with Blake’s family but held a roundtable with local law enforcement.

Republicans are betting Trump’s “law and order” playbook — which echoes 1960s-era GOP strategies on racial divisions for which the party later apologized prior to Trump’s ascendance — will benefit him electorally, energizing his predominately white base and appealing to the white women Republicans lost in 2018. As unrest in Kenosha unfolded last week, departing White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said that increased “chaos” and “anarchy” would boost Trump’s reelection prospects. But there’s been little evidence to date, including in the new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, that Trump’s bet is swaying voters.

“As President Donald Trump continues to drive his ‘law and order’ message amid a new wave of civil unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden maintains a comfortable trust advantage over the incumbent when it comes to who voters trust to handle public safety,” said Kyle Dropp, co-founder and chief research officer at Morning Consult.

Republican pollster Chris Wilson asserted the shift in support for Black Lives Matter “does put Biden at risk” as unrest continues in Democratically-run cities. But Wilson, CEO of WPA Intelligence, said the data shows “that the protests are more an opportunity than automatic win for Trump.”

“[Trump] has to navigate both a rhetorical and policy obstacle course to show the right amount of strength and engagement in protecting Americans and their property, without veering into ignoring the underlying issues that Americans believe exist and justified the protests before they turned violent,” Wilson said. “But this is the first issue in months that has the real possibility of shaking up the election and giving Trump the ability to make big gains.”

Overall, the new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows Trump with a 42 percent approval rating, unchanged from last week, before the Republican convention. The poll surveyed 1,988 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Biden addressed Trump’s attacks and the racial reckoning across the country on Monday. “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?” Biden said in a speech in Pennsylvania. “We need justice in America. And we need safety in America.”

Morning Consult’s latest presidential tracking poll shows Biden 8 points ahead of Trump, equal to his lead before both conventions last month. Some other public surveys do show a slight tightening in the Biden-Trump race, though there is still a lack of direct data tying the protests or shootings of civilians in Kenosha and Portland to Biden or Trump’s standing electorally.

Cliff Albright, co-founder of the voter engagement group Black Voters Matter, which is one of hundreds of organizations engaged in the movement, considered the dip in support for Black Lives Matter “predictable” and said it could provide a needed gut check on “overconfidence” among Democrats.

“We don’t want to underestimate Trump,” he said. “But also [we’re] not getting carried away by some of the messaging and some of the poll variation that we’ve seen.”

Democratic pollster Terrance Woodbury said a recent statewide poll in Georgia conducted by his firm, HIT Strategies, found 79 percent of voters in the burgeoning battleground state believe racial and ethnic discrimination is a problem in the country.

“The problem is that safety and security and crime are not at the top of white women, suburban women’s priority list. Covid-19, economy and racism remain at the top of their priority list,” said Woodbury. “One reason why reduction in support for BLM doesn’t necessarily equate to reduction of support for Biden is that Biden isn’t running to be president of BLM voters.”

Activists dismiss much of the polling on Black Lives Matter, pointing to the low public support in the 1950s and 1960s for integration, the March on Washington and sit-in demonstrations during the civil rights movement.

And another poll released Wednesday by Grinnell College found that when the issue of racial inequality was framed around victims of police violence, respondents’ views of the current state of racial equality changed. When those surveyed were reminded of Floyd’s death, those who said the country is “very close,” “pretty close” or “already there” on full equality for African Americans dropped from 50 percent to 31 percent.

The Grinnell College poll also shows Biden leading Trump by 8 percentage points among likely voters, 49 percent to 41 percent, matching his margin in Morning Consult’s latest polling.

“[Trump] probably should be running against Joe Biden, instead of the movement, if he wants to win in November,” said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party and a leader with the Movement for Black Lives coalition. “Movements do not exist on electoral timelines. This is the tension, and the movement for Black lives is much longer and will have much more of a deeper impact than in one president and one election cycle.”

This article was originally published here.

Trump’s biggest roadblock to reelection is COVID-19
By Jonathan Easley
The Hill, Published August 24, 2020

President Trump’s biggest obstacle to winning a second term in office is the coronavirus pandemic, which has dramatically altered the course of the presidential race and raised serious questions about his leadership.

Trump and his campaign have sought to contend with criticism by arguing that China is to blame for the global spread of the virus and that the U.S. government has done everything in its power to steer resources to states.

The president has repeatedly highlighted his decision to cut off travel from China and Europe, noting it was criticized at the time but was then followed by other countries.

Republicans believe Trump will have a compelling and optimistic story to tell at the national convention this week about the extreme measures he’s taken in pursuit of a vaccine, but there are real questions about whether the Trump administration took the virus seriously when it first arrived in the U.S., and polls reflect voter disappointment with the White House.

More than 170,000 people in the United States have died from COVID-19, more than in any other country. The nation has had 5.5 million cases and counting. Beyond the terrible death toll, the pandemic has wrecked the economy and interrupted life, preventing children from going to school and curtailing everything from summer evenings at the ballpark to date night at the weekend movie blockbuster.

The federal government has struggled to get up to speed on testing. Trump has publicly battled with his own medical experts and government agencies. And his messaging about the virus has been all over the place.

A majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the pandemic and most voters say they trust Democratic nominee Joe Biden to lead on the matter.

“Trump looked at this through a political lens, and when you do that on a matter as serious as public health, you expose yourself to a downside you cannot control,” said former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. “That’s where Trump finds himself now. It doesn’t matter the narrative he tries to spin or what his surrogates go out and say. There are more than 172,000 dead Americans and more than 5 million people have been infected.”

Experts say the federal government failed to recognize the potential for a pandemic when the first U.S. case was identified in January.

The Food and Drug Administration did not approve a coronavirus test until weeks later and the government has been slow to get up to speed on testing and contact tracing ever since.

Experts say social distancing, travel bans and quarantines needed to be broader and implemented earlier.

Biden and Democrats have pointed to those failures to argue that the virus hit the U.S. much harder than it should have because of Trump’s leadership.

Not all of the failures fall on Trump.

The coronavirus is new, highly contagious and still a mystery to immunologists. The virus spread quickly from Wuhan, China, with little warning or transparency from Chinese officials.

There was confusion early on, even among medical experts and the news media, about the seriousness of the virus and the effectiveness of masks.

The states have overseen their own slow and fragmented responses. The virus exposed long entrenched problems in the U.S. medical system and supply chain.

But Trump exacerbated confusion around the pandemic by publicly clashing with his own experts and only recently embracing masks.

Early on, the president spoke about how the virus would go away on its own and he talked down the seriousness of it.

Trump promoted unproven therapeutics and his rhetoric has contributed to the politicization of the virus, with Republicans less likely to wear masks or to view the virus as a serious health threat.

The sum total has been to drag Trump down in the polls, where he faces a wide gap against Biden among independents and moderate suburban voters.

The latest CNN survey found disapproval over Trump’s handling of the pandemic at a new high of 58 percent. The poll found Biden leading by 4 points in a head-to-head match-up with Trump but leading by 9 points on the coronavirus.

A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey found that 53 percent of voters believe Trump did not take the coronavirus seriously from the start, up from 45 percent in April. Sixty-one percent in that poll described the U.S. response as unsuccessful.

Governors, even in hard-hit states, have better coronavirus approval ratings than Trump.

“I think any president facing a serious pandemic would see their ratings slip,” said Chris Wilson, a Republican pollster. “We’re not a particularly patient or cooperative country and unfortunately there are things that just don’t have policy solutions – like pandemics. But people have been so trained to think the president can do anything they hold him responsible.”

This article was originally published here.