As battleground states become pandemic hotspots, Trump’s numbers only get worse, worse, worse

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At this point, per our daily Civiqs tracking polls, there aren’t a lot of states left happy with Trump’s response to the virus. 

But as harsh as that national map looks, with voters in all but the reddest states disapproving of the federal response, let’s look at the shift in those answering “not satisfied at all” in the last month, in key battlegrounds, as compared to the national average. 

“not satisfied at all”
6/7
7/6
Net Change

United States
41
48
+7

Alaska 
39
47
+8

Arizona*
41
47
+6

Florida*
38
46
+8

Georgia*
38
45
+7

Iowa
37
45
+8

Michigan*
39
47
+8

Montana
35
43
+8

North Carolina*
39
45
+6

Ohio
35
41
+6

Pennsylvania*
38
46
+8

Texas
37
43
+6

Wisconsin*
40
48
+8

The starred and bolded states are the core battlegrounds—the ones that will ultimately decide the election. (In other words, if presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins Montana, he’s already won all of the starred states.) And yes, Trump is at risk of losing Alaska and Montana (thus giving Democratic Senate candidates a fighting chance in those otherwise red states). 

A couple of things stand out in these numbers: 

You can tell which 2016 Trump states he’s most at-risk of losing: Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin. This has been amply confirmed by public polling. In these three states, strong disapproval of Trump’s handling of the pandemic is at nearly half of all voters. It’s hard to see how Trump digs himself out of that hole. (Flipping those three states alone would give us a 269-269 tie, nightmarishly enough.) 
Among the core battlegrounds, Trump suffered his worst -8 drops in Florida and Pennsylvania—the two biggest states. He can’t win the election without both of them. Similar -8 drops has threatened to put Michigan and Wisconsin out of reach, and helped put Alaska, Iowa, and Montana in play.  
Nothing in the charts suggests Trump has hit bottom. The current surge in pandemic cases will result in a new surge in deaths starting sometime next week. Among the states hardest hit in this new wave are battleground states with idiot Republican governors: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Those Republicans opened their states too quickly to please Trump, and it will cost them in lives, economic devastation, and votes.  
There is some correlation between how competitive a state is, and how high pandemic response disapprovals are. Iowa, Ohio, Montana, and Texas are still in the low- to mid-40s, and they are among the least likely states on this list to flip Blue. Florida and Georgia, in the mid-40s, will be the toughest core battleground states to flip. This offers some evidence (though nowhere near conclusive, to be sure), that Trump’s reelection chances are closely tied to the pandemic. 

We’re only four months from the election, so how is Trump going to turn these numbers around? No vaccine is in sight. He’s not actually doing anything to mitigate the spread of the disease, or the economic devastation it’s leaving in its wake. He’s not even talking about it, because he’s not addled enough to realize that the issue is killing him. Worse than that, they’re hoping that people “grow numb to the escalating death toll and learn to accept tens of thousands of new cases a day.”

It hasn’t worked so far, so why would it work in the months ahead? 

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