The final stretch of the race for the White House between Donald Trump and Joe Biden has been fraught with dramatic twists — a hospitalized president, a resurgent pandemic, the death of an iconic Supreme Court justice, and the rapid confirmation of her successor.
Yet none of it appears to have altered the course of the race that was set months ago.
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After striding into the 2020 election year with a white-hot economy and beating Democratic efforts to remove him from office, Trump was ready to cruise to a second term. But then came the pandemic and economic devastation, steadily unraveling his presidency and case for re-election.
Now, two days before Election Day, Trump finds himself significantly trailing his Democratic challenger and looking to defy public opinion polls — as he did four years ago — to salvage a victory.
“The polling average in this race has just not moved, no matter what happened,” said Jason Roberts, associate chair and professor in the political science department at UNC-Chapel Hill. “Which to me suggests that voters by and large have made up their minds and made up their minds months ago, and the campaign has just been a sideshow.”
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While views of Trump’s performance dimmed as coronavirus deaths mounted in the spring, recent dire news about a resurgence of the pandemic, coupled with the failure of the government to pass another round of economic stimulus, has only reinforced the view that Trump has mishandled the crisis.
And the changes are weighing on markets, one of Trump’s favorite barometers for his performance. The S&P 500 Index dropped 5.6% last week over concerns about economic growth — the worst-ever loss in the week leading to a presidential election.
Trump, though, has maintained his defiant approach and says he has enough support across forgotten corners of America to deliver a second term. He’ll need his die-hard base, who are more likely to vote in-person, to deliver victories in several neck-and-neck states. And he needs Democrats who are lukewarm on Biden — particularly urban and minority voters — to stay home.
Biden aides have raised warning flags in the final weeks of the race that the campaign has not done enough to encourage Black and Latino voters to turn out, particularly in critical states like Florida and Pennsylvania and expansion states like Arizona. Fewer than half of non-White voters in those states have cast ballots so far.
But Trump has lost support from key groups, including seniors and suburban women, over his response to the pandemic. Biden now leads by more than 20 percentage points among women in most polls.
“I think a lot of women are struggling more than ever because of COVID-19, and I think that has really impacted this election,” said Nichola Gutgold, a professor at Penn State Lehigh Valley who studies women in politics. “Middle-class suburban women have turned on Trump mostly because their lives have gotten very hard.”
Trump has campaigned on staying the course — cut more taxes, continue to fortify U.S. borders, further curb immigration and roll back more regulations. He has repeatedly struggled to articulate a broader vision for his second term.
If Biden wins and Democrats take the Senate, he’ll be under pressure from liberals to pursue a range of structural changes to the government. That could include expanding the Supreme Court, to dilute the conservative majority Trump reinforced, and granting statehood to Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, adding what would be an almost guaranteed four Democrats to the majority.
But he would also risk the same fate that befell Barack Obama: winning on a wave of high expectations, only to face a tight window to pass core priorities before midterm elections that could cost Democrats control of one or both chambers of Congress.
