US Election Tracker – COVID Surge Complicates Trump’s Re-election Bid
- By Caroline Grady and Bilal Hafeez
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- 1 min read
A new all-time daily record of 62,117 US COVID cases on Wednesday highlights the difficulty in President Trump’s reelection campaign. Any significant bounce back in Q3 GDP data (due for release just 5 days before the election) is contingent upon mobility levels normalizing and America returning to work. With mobility levels currently declining in swing states such as Florida (Chart 1) this could well delay the recovery. Given the economy is the only area where polls show Trump is currently trusted more than the Democrats this will be a huge concern for the Republican campaign…
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A new all-time daily record of 62,117 US COVID cases on Wednesday highlights the difficulty in President Trump’s reelection campaign. Any significant bounce back in Q3 GDP data (due for release just 5 days before the election) is contingent upon mobility levels normalizing and America returning to work. With mobility levels currently declining in swing states such as Florida (Chart 1) this could well delay the recovery. Given the economy is the only area where polls show Trump is currently trusted more than the Democrats this will be a huge concern for the Republican campaign.
Unemployment data are improving (on a headline level anyway) and the S&P is up 24% since the March low but this has not done much to materially shore up Trump’s popularity. At 40.1 it is the lowest so far this year and declined fairly consistently from the late March high.
Biden is due to begin elaborating his plan to revive the US economy in a speech later on Thursday. Clean energy, health care and boosting the domestic economy through promotion of American made goods are all expected to feature. Latest polls show some easing back in the chance of a Democrat win but this still leaves Joe Biden way ahead (Chart 2). And importantly, the chance of the Democrats taking the Senate remains unchanged from last week at 62%.
Bilal Hafeez is the CEO and Editor of Macro Hive. He spent over twenty years doing research at big banks – JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, and Nomura, where he had various “Global Head” roles and did FX, rates and cross-markets research.
Caroline Grady is a Senior Researcher at Macro Hive. Formerly, she was a Senior EM Economist at Deutsche Bank and a Leader Writer at the Financial Times.
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