A new US election model has predicted that President Donald Trump will lose by a landslide in November election as a result of the virus-stricken economy.
The national election model released Wednesday by Oxford Economics said the coronavirus recession will cause Trump to suffer a “historic defeat” in November, capturing just 35% of the popular vote.
That’s a sharp reversal from the model’s pre-virus crisis prediction that Trump would win about 55% of the vote. And it would be the worst performance for an incumbent president in a century, CNN said.
The model uses unemployment, disposable income and inflation to forecast election results.
“It would take nothing short of an economic miracle for pocketbooks to favor Trump,” Oxford Economics wrote in the report, adding that the economy will be a “nearly insurmountable obstacle for Trump come November.”
The model has correctly predicted the popular vote in every election since 1948 other than 1968 and 1976, CNN said.
Millions of Americans have lost their jobs to the coronavirus crisis and relied on unemployment benefits for their livelihoods.
36.5 million people have filed unemployment claims since mid-March. That represents 22.4% of the March labor force, according to the US Department of Labor.
US unemployment rate was 14.7% in April as America lost more than 20 million jobs. But predictions for the May unemployment rate are even higher, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly jobs report.
Another model by Oxford Economics forecasted that seven battleground US states will flip to Democrats: Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina. The model, which incorporates local economic trends and gasoline prices, predicted Trump will badly lose the electoral college by a margin of 328 to 210.
“We would expect these states to experience significant economic contractions and traumatic job losses that would likely swing pocketbook vote,” the report said.
The November election may be a referendum on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, CNN said.
“If new infections really pick up, people will conclude Trump opened the country too soon,” said Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist at AGF Investments. “But if new infections drop, Trump will get some credit.”
“Every incumbent president facing a recession in the lead-up to reelection has lost,” said Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James.
“The real debate is what does the economy look like on Election Day?” said Mills. “Will the country have gotten past the worst of the coronavirus (Covid-19) and the worst of the economic shock?”
The United States has the world’s highest coronavirus death toll and infections. The country recorded 23,285 new cases of coronavirus and 1,518 related deaths on Wednesday, according to Johns Hopkins University.
That raises the US virus death toll to 93,439 deaths and confirmed cases to at least 1,551,853.
Source: Press TV
