I hate to bust your bubble but if coronavirus affects the election, it's likely to be in Trump's favor

Looking back at how pandemics have affected elections in the past tells us what many Democratic voters probably don't want to know

Does the coronavirus pandemic spell the end of Trump’s presidency? A profusion of breathless op-eds would have us believe so. The beau ideal of this likely transient sub-genre of NeverTrumpism is Peter Wehner’s recent article in The Atlantic. “The coronavirus is quite likely to be the Trump presidency’s inflection point,” writes Wehner, “when everything changed, when the bluster and ignorance and shallowness of America’s 45th president became undeniable, an empirical reality, as indisputable as the laws of science or a mathematical equation.” The piece is sodden with condescension and the overconfidence of a soothsaying naïf. Its gleeful air of vindication is, given the stakes, slightly vindictive.

This is not to say that Wehner and others don’t have a point. Trump’s shambolic, self-interested, head-in-the-sand handling of the crisis has put untold lives at risk. Early on, he spurned the expertise of public health officials and thereby squandered the time bought by his travel restrictions. His blasé attitude set the tone now adopted by many of his supporters and, of course, Fox News. As a consequence, the social distancing necessary to “flatten the curve” is proving difficult to achieve. He has demonstrated himself incapable of delivering accurate information; incapable, even, of simply reading from a teleprompter. One can easily imagine his prospects for reelection receding in proportion to an increasing body count.

But pronouncements of Trump’s electoral doom are at best premature. At worst, they are hubristic in a way similar to Trump’s own blustering assurance that the US is “totally prepared” for the pandemic. The coronavirus will certainly impact the election, but there are more factors in play than Wehner et al seem to appreciate.

Even after the two most dismal public addresses of his presidency, and amidst the worst market crash since 1987, that “empirical reality” of Wehner’s seems to be not so “undeniable” after all — at least among Trump supporters. According to Saturday’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 81 per cent of Republican voters approve of Trump’s handling of the crisis. Among all voters, the number is 45 per cent, a single point shy of his most recent general approval rating. Trump’s base is impressively stubborn. That could differ in the coming weeks, but such a change is by no means inevitable.

As Lindsay Newman explains, the true X-factor is whether the pandemic disrupts the November election. It is not inconceivable that events could force a postponement of voting — and we should prepare for that possibility; Democratic primaries for the presidential nominee have already been suspended. Much more likely than a delay in the entire general election, however, is the pandemic suppressing voter turnout. Going to the polls to vote requires standing in close proximity to other people, sharing pens, touching the same voting machines, and other actions that multiply the opportunities for transmission.

This was a concern during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic of 2009. As election day coincides with the beginning of the flu season, the Election Assistance Commission “asked all 50 states to submit flu contingency plans outlining how they'll lessen the threat of H1N1 transmission at their polling places.” Some states provided hand sanitizer at polling locations and diligently wiped down machines with alcohol throughout the day. In Wisconsin, some poll workers wore medical masks and latex gloves. But while preventing transmission at polling locations is commendable, it doesn’t solve the problem of the already sick, and the simply cautious, choosing to stay home.

In each of the special and gubernatorial elections held in November 2009, there was a noticeable drop in voter turnout compared to the previous election for the same office (though the special congressional races are skewed because of the high turnout for the 2008 general). Virginia and New Jersey each saw a drop of about 2 per cent in their gubernatorial elections. Correlation is not causation, of course; and much more sophisticated number-crunching is needed to clarify the trend than my crude heuristic. But I do believe there is a trend.

With the exception of the flu pandemic of 1957-1958 (which yielded 116,000 deaths), pandemics that occurred in an election year seem to coincide with dips in voter turnout. In 1976, the Ford administration created mass panic over a swine flu epidemic that never materialized; voter turnout in that year’s general was 54.8 per cent compared to 56.2 in 1972 (figures are from the United States Election Project). A flu pandemic in 1968, which killed 100,000 people in the US, coincided with a much smaller dip to 62.5 per cent from 62.8 in 1964. During the 1918 midterm elections, when the Spanish flu killed 500,000 Americans, turnout fell from 50.4 per cent to 39.9.

Unless the US succeeds in drastically slowing the spread of coronavirus, the 1918 election might become the closest analog for this November. This should worry Democrats.

“Relative to rural areas,” write Laura Bliss and Kriston Capps for City Lab, “urban centers do provide stronger chains of viral transmission, with higher rates of contact and larger numbers of infection-prone people.” This does not mean that people living in rural areas have nothing to fear; in a country as interconnected as ours, no community is immune to penetration. But it is unlikely that rural areas in general will be hit as hard as major cities.

Whatever suppressive effect the pandemic might have on voter turnout will not be evenly distributed. Larger cities — nearly all of which are Democratic strongholds — will bear the brunt of suppression. This will give Trump an edge in November; how big an edge remains to be seen. But with Trump having won Michigan by a margin of only 0.23 per cent, Pennsylvania by 0.72 per cent, and Wisconsin by 0.77 perc ent, any edge at all might prove decisive.

In other words, it’s believable that the pandemic will have the complete opposite effect liberals are hoping for: It may hand Trump a second term.