Is the COVID-19 crisis an advantage for Trump’s re-election or vice versa?

The pandemic in the twenty-first century has now become the most determining force on the outcome of the 2020 American Presidential Elections. In this paper, I am going to analyze the impact of the pandemic on Mr. Trump’s chances of getting re-elected. Does it undermine his chances or vice versa? This question may be answered based on three major factors: prevalence in digital campaigning, the candidates’ view on China, and Mr. Trump’s response to the coronavirus and economic recession.

Digital campaign

The coronavirus outbreak made running traditional campaigns problematic as since March neither Donald Trump nor his opponent Joe Biden made public speeches in front of their supporters. Unexpectedly, the importance of running digital campaigns through virtual platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram waxed. This circumstance would have a profound impact on Mr. Trump’s re-election in November but in which way? Well, there is no one answer to this question. 

In the 2016 presidential election, Facebook played a crucial role in determining the outcome of the elections. Trump campaign managers put many efforts into digital campaigning by creating 5.9 million ads on Facebook whereas Hillary Clinton’s team made only 66 thousand ads. Though it spawned much debate about the manipulation of public opinion as some news distributed via microtargeting was proven to be false. The microtargeting itself was contentious from the privacy policy perspective as it was reported that some user data was shared with political consulting companies. Afterward, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was called to testify in Congress and confessed that Facebook was reluctant in checking the validity of spread information and protecting the privacy of user data that could cause public manipulation. 

Due to the COVID-19 crisis, internet media consumption increased worldwide including the United States. The role of digital campaigning strengthened even more as quarantine rules do not allow big people gatherings in the context of a traditional campaign running. Meaning that social media and other digital network platforms gained more significance for the success of political campaigns. However, it seems history is repeating itself and the Democratic side is still far behind allocating sufficient time, human and strategy resources for prevalence in digital campaigning. On the contrary, Donald Trump’s team is taking the internet more seriously having clear predominance over Mr. Biden’s team, and here is why.

Firstly, from the contextual perspective, Mr. Trump’s campaign is more digitally oriented. The vivid exemplification of this is the manager of the campaign himself: Brad Parscale. Mr. Parscale is versed in programming languages and possesses vast experience working with digital advertisements. Moreover, unlike the previous campaign, according to his own words, the availability of an information base makes the task for Mr. Parscale easier in 2020. This is pretty understandable as the whole government’s intelligence machine is in the service of President and a candidate Trump.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, has only 25 people working for his digital campaign and himself preferring a more traditional way of running a campaign and not spending so much time on social media as Mr. Trump does. Even if Mr. Biden places a complete focus on digital campaigning, he is far behind Mr. Trump in the number of followers on all virtual platforms. For instance, on Twitter Donald Trump and Joe Biden have around 80 and 6 million followers respectively. This kind of huge gap is much telling about the virtual campaign possibilities of each candidate. It means more Americans unwittingly interact with Mr. Trump’s politically biased tweets being deprived of reading both candidates’ opinions and objectively evaluating them. 

But what if Mr. Biden accumulates as many followers as Mr. Trump already has? Well, getting more popular on the internet to deliver a message is a very time-taking task and can last many months. Even in case, Mr. Biden’s team succeeded in this, it still would not pave the way to a cordial change. The point is that Mr. Trump is more radical than Joe Biden; his ideas are more provocative in which he constantly blames someone, focuses on a certain segment of the American population, states his thoughts in an emotional manner, etc. Such politically incorrect but more concentrated on potential electorate expressions receive more likes, shares, and comments by spreading it across digital platforms. Mr. Biden’s centrism and unity pledges which are quite abstract oppose his need of being more “shared” on social media. Ironically, attempting to appeal broader segments of the population, Mr. Biden gets full support of none of them. Although more radical progressive politicians such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders whose ideas more ideologically concrete and segment-oriented, endorsed Mr. Biden, will this endorsement bring more support and popularity? It is unlikely until Mr. Biden nominates them as the running mate or publicly promises to appoint them to a certain post. Any radical leftist would like the idea of Bernie Sander being a Secretary of Labor.

Here we can argue that Donald Trump’s political course, material, and digital opportunities, campaign orientation grant him more chances for victory in the virtual world. Accordingly, the coronavirus outbreak deliberately increased the strategic importance of the digital campaigning in which Mr. Trump far outweighs Joe Biden. 

Views on China

The second big way how the coronavirus outbreak might affect the 2020 elections is the candidates’ stances on China. The readers might doubt the importance of this criterion; however, there are two indicators based on which I make this argument. Firstly, both candidates’ campaign managers considered this a sufficiently critical issue to include it in political advertisement. Inside the videos, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden accuse each other of being too soft on China. Secondly, the Pew Research survey shows that 66 percent of Americans now have negative views of China against 26 percent in favor and 8 percent saying “don’t know.” The proportion is large enough to impact the outcome of the elections. Consequently, a candidate being more stubborn and stricter about China will have more chances for victory. But who has been tougher on China?

Amid the pandemic Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Biden’s claims on China seem more similar, however, by taking a short glance at history it is obvious that their approaches significantly differ. 

Mr. Trump had negative views on China even before getting elected as the President by blaming it for taking advantage of the United States. After entering the office, President Trump took other measures against China. First of all, China was numerously mentioned as posing threat in plenty of spheres such as trade, artificial intelligence, military, geopolitics, soft-power, etc. in the National Security Strategy (NSS). It morphed Mr. Trump’s campaign claims into prospective policy implementations in this direction. Secondly, Mr. Trump commenced a trade war against China putting high tariffs on Chinese imports. He criticized China on bypassing the rules of trade and damaging American farmers by creating an image of a President protecting the American people from China. In the times of rising negative views on China, it is useful for Mr. Trump.

On the contrary, in May 2019 Mr. Biden called the Chinese “not bad folks” and stated “they are not in competition for us” in response to Mr. Trump’s concerns about China. And the administration of which Mr. Biden was Vice President, considered the relationship with China as the most important in the twenty-first century. Ultimately, Mr. Biden cannot boast about being tough on China and this is not only about himself but also his party’s mainstream policy. Republicans have inherently been more negative on China and persisted in the importance of domination in great power competition counterweight to Democrats mostly preferring cooperation. 

Recently in a democratic primary debate, Joe Biden said that Donald Trump did not hold China accountable and “rolled over the Chinese.” However, this statement is not an appropriate one amid increased racism against Asian Americans. Considering the fact Mr. Biden’s potential constituency is mostly racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, the statement puts his own “unifying leader” image at risk sidelining not only Asian Americans but also other minorities.

Economic impact and timely response to the coronavirus

The third most determining factors that might influence the elections in November are economic recession and measures taken to respond to the pandemic by President Trump. Many consider that Americans will understand how unprofessional and negligent the President when it comes to handling major crises. Political advertisements prepared by Mr. Biden’s team showcases a high level of hope for hitting the President on this ground. 

Notifying the reader that this section does not aim to answer the question of whether the response was proper or not, it only takes into a discussion how the actions taken by the President were perceived by Americans and this perception’s possible influence on the upcoming elections. 

In general, Americans are slightly more negative about the President’s response to the pandemic (response in this paragraph is refers to measured taken to prevent the spread of the virus.) A large portion of people holding a negative view is young people, liberals, and ethnic minorities (Pew). As a rebuttal to this point, the majority of Protestants, white Catholics, and the elderly are confident in Mr. Trump’s coronavirus response. At first look, it seems that the majority is not in favor of the President concerning the pandemic case, however, the groups not supporting Mr. Trump (mentioned above) is not the electorate which voted for him in 2016. Vice versa, people who voted for Donald Trump are the same White Christians and elderly Americans. Accordingly, the coronavirus crisis could not yet switch the positions of that segment of the American population on which Donald Trump focuses his political discourse. 

The economic impact of the pandemic is more challenging though. More than half of Americans think Mr. Trump is not doing a good job in terms of addressing the economic needs of ordinary people. Slightly more than half of Americans think that he is good at aiding businesses facing financial difficulties. However, the monthly unemployment reports are very high and keep growing. Lowest in history of the United States unemployment rates with which Donald Trump was bragging is now obsolete. Severe consequences of economic recession are quite likely and, certainly, it will affect Mr. Trump’s chances to get re-elected. The extent of its affection will go hand in hand with the size of damage to the US economy caused by the pandemic.

Undeniably, the economic impact of the pandemic hit the whole world and the long term impact is obscured so far. Among all the above-mentioned factors of the coronavirus impact, the economic part is ongoing and will shape public opinion within the process of handling the crisis. Because this is the matter of future, any attempts to formulate precise predictions over the impact of the recession on Mr. Trump’s chances of getting re-elected are doomed to be imprecise.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would argue that at this point, Mr. Trump’s chances are not undermined by the pandemic. On the contrary, some powerful aspects of Mr. Trump’s campaign such prevalence in digital networking are strengthened even to a greater extent. The Democratic side, on the other hand, seems to be giving less significance to digital campaigning as they were doing in 2016.

Trump’s political course is also convenient for the current situation, as for the first time not only Americans but also the world started thinking of China as a country shutting transparency and honesty. American workers and manufacturers one more time got confident that China is posing threat on many grounds and Mr. Trump’s China policy was correct. Even though Joe Biden now uses tough rhetoric against China and criticizes allegedly “soft President” on it, his statements are not convincing and do not reflect what he was saying a year before. In politics, a lie is not a big deal, but a radical change of the system of your beliefs is a different story.

In the end, the most complicated issue is the worsening economy that puts Mr. Trump’s re-elections chances at high risk. If no preventive measures will be taken, the unemployed might vote for a change and a more socially-oriented Democratic President. Thus, much will depend on the direction in which the economy flows. Besides, the impact of COVID-19, for now, is harmless to Mr. Trump, vice versa at some point it is beneficial.

Anar Imanzade
Anar Imanzade
BA - Baku State University, Political Science MA - Boğaziçi University, International Relations