Trump will suffer ‘historic LANDSLIDE defeat’ against Biden because of COVID economy, model predicts
A NEW model has predicted President Donald Trump could suffer a "landslide defeat" to Joe Biden in November because of the economic crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.
The study released by Oxford Economics on Wednesday predicted that rising unemployment an inflation will stifle the president's chances of a second term.
Oxford Economics, which has a strong track record of predicting presidential elections, had initially predicted that Trump would win 55 percent of the popular vote.
But as the coronavirus outbreak exploded in April, the group has now lowered their forecast to him securing only 35 percent of the popular vote, according to the Washington Post.
"It would take nothing short of an economic miracle for pocketbooks to favor Trump," wrote Oxford Economics.
"An unemployment rate above its global financial crisis peak, household income nearly 6 percent below its pre-virus levels, and transitory deflation will make the economy a nearly insurmountable obstacle for Trump come November,"
The model uses unemployment, disposable income, and inflation to forecast election results.
In six states that handed Trump the presidency in 2016 - Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin - unemployment benefit claims soared past a whopping two million in the last two weeks of March.
The figure amounts to "more than 5 times Trump's raw vote margin of victory" in those states, Cowen Washington Research Group said in a note.
"One of the ironclad rules of politics (pre 2016) was that recessions kill Presidential reelections," Cowen's Chris Krueger wrote.
"The Trump re-elect was based off of the economy [and] safety, running against socialism, and delivering that message via MAGA rallies. All of that is now in serious question."
The national election model assumes that the economy is still in bad shape this fall, with unemployment hovering above 13 percent and a brief period of deflation.
"The economy would still be in a worse state than at the depth of the Great Depression," Oxford's report said.
The model has correctly predicted the popular vote in every election since 1948, with the exception of 1968 and 1976.
A poll released Thursday places Biden ahead of Trump by six percentage points in the battleground state of Michigan, where Trump toured a Ford manufacturing plant that was recently converted to produce ventilators.
The survey conducted by Public Policy Polling suggests that the White House's handling of the US outbreak is hurting his chances at reelection.
Six out of 10 voters said Trump and his administration deserve a great deal or at least some responsibility for the loss of both American lives and US jobs from the virus, according to US News & World Report.
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However, there could still be hope for Trump to overtake the presumptive Democratic nominee in November.
If Trump wins the six aforementioned battleground states, he could well be on the way to a second presidential term, according to McClatchy DC.
A RealClearPolitics poll taken earlier this month placed Trump ahead of Biden in North Carolina, the newspaper reported.