PO, PIE, and Coronavirus

Suzanne Smalley at Yahoo:

The race for the White House against the backdrop of the coronavirus will scramble this summer’s political conventions, requiring the political parties to scrap their planned gatherings and replace them with “virtual” online events, veteran political strategist Joe Trippi predicted on the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast on Wednesday.

“Both parties have to prepare for some kind of virtual convention ... where delegates can vote by phone securely,” said Trippi, who pioneered an internet-driven campaign strategy when he was campaign manager for upstart Democratic candidate Howard Dean in 2004.

Calling the conventions “produced television shows for the party,” Trippi said the Republican and Democratic national committees will likely treat conventions as one night of a produced television show followed by a second night during which candidates give speeches and announce vice presidential picks

No doubt the national party chairs are talking with staff and electeds about this subject. RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, BTW, has tested negative for COVID-19.

In class, we discussed models for forecasting presidential elections. Alan Abramowitz, who developed the most accurate model, writes that current events could mean big electoral trouble for the incumbent:

Table 2 presents the conditional forecasts of the electoral vote for President Trump depending on his net approval rating in late June and the growth rate of the U.S. economy during the second quarter. It takes 270 electoral votes to win a presidential election. The results indicate that, despite the huge boost that Trump is predicted to receive as a first-term incumbent, an economic downturn in the second quarter, combined with a net approval rating in negative territory, would very likely doom Trump’s chances of winning a second term. The only scenario here in which Trump would be favored to win a second term would be modest economic growth combined with a small improvement in his net approval rating, which has been stuck in the vicinity of -10 for many months according to the FiveThirtyEight average. The model suggests that a major recession would likely result in an Electoral College landslide for Trump’s Democratic challenger, especially if it is accompanied by a further decline in the president’s approval rating.

BUT NOTE:  A poll shows that a majority approves of Trump's handling of the crisis, which could have an effect on his overall job approval in the weeks ahead.