Under normal conditions, the logical thing would have been for Donald Trump to win the election
Much has been written and much more will be written about the apparent failure of the Democratic Party in last week's election. Despite Joe Biden's foreseeable accession to the White House, his margins in key states have been lower than expected by polls. And in parallel, the Republican Party has maintained its majority in the Senate and has diminished the dominance of the Democrats in Congress. Biden thus approaches a complex legislature with no room to maneuver.
Is this a correct reading?
Yes and no. If we think about the optimism of the polls, yes. But if we think about the structural context in which the elections were held, no. This is illustrated by a fact: the majority of Americans (56%) considered before the elections that their life was better than four years ago. That his financial position had improved. In 2012 and 2004, the last two times a president in office ran for re-election, the percentage was 45% and 47% respectively.
A lot of punditry (including my own) assumed that 2020 was an exceptionally favorable electoral environment for Democrats.
— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) November 8, 2020
But most Americans are better off financially now than they were 4 years ago, and thanks to CARES, better off than they were last January. And most know it! pic.twitter.com/hp1E1yMe16
Trump started from a more favorable position.
Why? Because the United States has gone to more economically under him. GDP has expanded at a rate of 2.5% year-on-year during the last four years, above the figures recorded in Obama's second term (2.3%). In February, before the coronavirus devastated the world economy, its administration boasted of having reached the historical low of unemployment (3.5%) in the last half century. And the recovery in the third quarter of the year, pandemic through, has been good (33% annualized, equivalent to 7.4%).
CARES. To this must be added another fundamental factor in election year: in March, Congress approved the CARES law, a federal aid program to alleviate the effects of the coronavirus that included direct money transfers (up to $ 1,200) for all those below of the $ 75,000 annually. That program had cross-sectional support (Kamala Harris, future vice president, raised $ 2,000 a month for thousands of Americans months later).
Translated: today thousands and thousands of voters arrived on the day of the elections with much more money in their pockets. Economic conditions that, in general, tend to favor the ruling party.
Problems. Trump had in favor of him a) economic conditions and b) the presidency. Only three presidents have lost reelection in the last half century before him: George H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, whose case is very particular (he was not even previously elected, but inherited the position). In the United States, the most normal thing is to revalidate the mandate, especially when there is an economic boom. In the absence of the Electoral College meeting on December 14, Trump will not succeed.
Popularity. What has gone wrong then? An intuitive explanation would point to popularity. Historically, the president's approval rating has been highly correlated with his electoral results. This is one of the "fundamentals" that, unlike the economy, hurt Trump: the net approval of him (the percentage of voters who approve of his management vs. the percentage who disapprove) was at a - 8.
lol pic.twitter.com/nMn5grs0M7
— Matt Blackwell (@matt_blackwell) November 4, 2020
Seen this way, the defeat of Donald Trump (around 47% of the vote) would be more logical, more understandable in a historical context.
And the coronavirus. But there is another differential factor: the epidemic. Although his handling of the crisis has had no discernible impact on his aggregate popularity (42% approval in March, 44% in October), it has favored the Democratic Party to mobilize its constituency more vigorously. If only 24% of Republicans considered the pandemic among their main causes of vote before the elections, the percentage shot up to 82% among Democrats. Democratic bases already highly mobilized by the party, after the unforeseen failure of 2016.
The very high turnout and the slight electoral turnaround (the popular vote has been very similar compared to four years ago and 97% of counties in the country have voted the same as then) make a failure of Trump more plausible long before that of the Democratic Party . Because under normal conditions, without an epidemic, the result might have been different.
