Did COVID Cost Trump the Election? This Model that got 2016 and 2020 Right Suggests So
The COVID-19 Pandemic’s impact on the 2020 Presidential Election has conflicted me for some time. Many observers, including people in Donald Trump’s campaign, suggest that his lack of effort to control the pandemic and disregard for wearing masks were the major reasons he lost the election. However, there is also evidence that the COVID-19 Pandemic introduced several events that helped Trump, such as economic anxiety over lockdowns and the Democratic Party’s decision to stop in-person canvassing.
We will never know for certain if Trump would have won the election had there been no pandemic. But an election model created by American University Professor Allan Lichtman, with assistance from geophysicist Vladimir Keilis-Borok, suggests that the pandemic set off a chain of events that led to Trump’s loss.
The model is based on 13 factors occurring during a president’s most recent term. Lichtman calls each of these factors keys. In order for a candidate of the incumbent party to win the election (whether the candidate is the incumbent or not), they must have eight of those keys. If they have less than eight, they lose the election.
The model has predicted the outcome of every Presidential election with the exception of 2000. In 2016, even when most political forecasters and news outlets predicted a Hillary Clinton victory, Lichtman predicted that Trump would win. And this was why I felt slightly more hopeful when he predicted in August of 2020 that Joe Biden would defeat Trump, which he did.
However, prior to the pandemic, Lichtman stated that Trump only had four keys against him and two more keys would need to turn against him for him to lose. Let’s examine the status of the keys before the pandemic.
The Keys Before the Pandemic
Key 1: Party Mandate (After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats inthe U.S. House of Representatives than it did after the previous midterm elections) FALSE (Democrats gained 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms).
Key 2: Contest (There is no serious contest for the incumbent-party nomination) TRUE (Despite challenges from Joe Walsh and Bill Weld, Trump overwhelmingly won the GOP primaries with nearly 94 percent of the vote. The pandemic wouldn’t have changed that).
Key 3: Incumbency (The incumbent-party candidate is the sitting president) TRUE (Direct result of Key 2).
Key 4: Third Party (There is no significant third party or independent campaign) UNDETERMINED (Justin Amash briefly flirted with a Libertarian Party run, but decided against it. Part of his reasoning was that the COVID Pandemic was impeding his ability to campaign and fundraise. It is certainly possible that he would have ran a serious third party campaign had it not been for the pandemic, as he had far more widespread name recognition than Jo Jorgensen or Howie Hawkins. However, according to the model, a third party candidacy hurts the incumbent, so in this case the pandemic helped Trump secure this key).
Key 5: Short-term Economy (The economy is not in recession during the election campaign) UNDETERMINED (Prior to the pandemic, the economy was not a recession so the key was leaning towards Trump. However this was always subject to change).
Key 6 Long-term Economy (Real per-capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms) UNDETERMINED (Prior to the pandemic, the GDP growth under Trump was +2.5%, compared to Obama’s +1.625% during his two terms. However this was also always subject to change.)
Key 7: Policy Change (The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy) TRUE (Lichtman stated the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and Trump’s executive orders caused major changes in national policy).
Key 8: Social Unrest (There is no sustained social unrest during the term) UNDETERMINED (At the time, there had been no sustained social unrest during Trump’s term on the level of the 1968 riots. But this was always subject to change).
Key 9: Scandal (The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal) FALSE (Lichtman stated that an impeachment of Trump would turn the scandal key against him. And Trump was impeached right before the pandemic).
Key 10: Foreign/Military Failure (The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs) UNDETERMINED (At the time, the Trump administration did not suffer a foreign or military failure on the level of 9/11 or the unresolved Iraq War. Another subject to change key).
Key 11: Foreign/Military Success (The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs) UNDETERMINED (At the time, the Trump administration did not achieve a major success in foreign or military affairs on the level of the 1987 INF Treaty. Subject to change).
Key 12: Incumbent Charisma (The incumbent-party candidate is charismatic or a national hero) FALSE (While Trump might come off as charismatic to his base, Lichtman does not give this key to Trump as the candidate must have appeal to those outside their base)
Key 13: Challenge Charisma (The challenging-party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero) TRUE (Lichtman did not consider any Democratic candidate in the 2020 primaries to have that quality).
How the Undetermined Non-Pandemic Related Keys Turned
As I mentioned earlier, Key 4 turned to Trump when a serious third party challenger failed to materialize, which could have happened had there not been a pandemic. But it’s unlikely it would have been on the level of 2016, as far fewer voters viewed both Trump and Biden negatively (3 percent vs 18 percent in 2016, according to CNN exit polls). So let’s assume that the lack of a third party challenger isn’t pandemic related.
Keys 10 and 11 also turned for reasons unrelated to the pandemic. Trump suffered no major foreign policy or military failure, turning the key in his favor. But he also did not achieve a major foreign policy or military success, turning the key against him. This key is somewhat controversial, as Trump helped facilitate diplomatic relations between Israel and the Gulf States and Sudan. However, Lichtman does not consider this enough to turn the key, as the treaties were not significant enough to the point where the average American knew about them. Lichtman also did not give the foreign policy success key to Bill Clinton when he helped negotiate diplomatic relations between Israel and Jordan. I personally find it unlikely either of these keys would turn differently had there been no pandemic.
So right now Trump has six keys turned in his favor, four turned against him and three are still undetermined, but leaning towards him. Trump now needs two of those keys to win.
How the Pandemic Turned The Three Keys Against Trump
As a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the U.S. economy suffered the worst recession since World War II. Because of the shutdowns and changes in our activities, the unemployment rate in the U.S. surged to a peak of 14.7% in April of 2020 and GDP decreased 31.7% in the second quarter of 2020. While the economy started to recover in the months leading up to the election, it still hadn’t recovered fully enough to be out of a recession. So Key 5 turns against Trump.
The economic downturn was also significant enough to turn Key 6 against Trump. In the whole year of 2020, the U.S. GDP growth was a loss of 3.5%. This gave Trump an average GDP growth of 1.0 percent during his term, which was less than the previous two terms.
Now it is certainly possible there would have still been a recession in 2020 without COVID. In 2019, many economists feared that Trump’s trade wars would plunge us into a recession in 2020. However, by the end of 2019, fears of a recession were receding, as Trump was toning down the trade war with China (This was before anybody in the U.S. knew anything about COVID of course!). A non-covid recession also might not have been strong enough to turn Key 6.
We will never know any of these things for certain, but one thing is clear. The pandemic caused a recession, flipping Keys 5 and 6 against Trump.
Now, the final key is the civil unrest key. Lichtman considers the nationwide protests and riots that occurred following the murder of George Floyd, to be sustained civil unrest with “enough violence to threaten the social order.” So that key turns against Trump.
Now police brutality and systemic racism obviously are not new issues in America. And there is evidence to suggest that the level of civil unrest was mainly caused by four years of President Trump fanning the flames of white grievance. But there is also evidence to suggest that the COVID-19 Pandemic had an enormous impact as well.
The COVID-19 Pandemic exposed racial disparities both in health and employment. BIPOC Americans suffered higher hospitalization and death rates from COVID than white Americans along with higher unemployment rates as a result of the recession. Those factors led to a national environment ripe for civil unrest. Many Americans in lockdown also had more time to pay attention to events and participate in protests, without the busyness of non-pandemic life.
Additionally, given how much COVID impacted nearly every aspect of our lives since March of 2020, it is entirely possible that in a non-COVID world, George Floyd might not have been at that very convenience store on that day, or Darnella Frazier might not have been there to record the murder. Tragically, it is entirely possible that without a compelling video, as in the case of George Floyd, numerous instances of police brutality against Black Americans, such as the killings of Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain, might never have fully come to light.
Therefore, it can be argued that without the pandemic, the U.S. would not experience civil unrest on the level to turn Key 8 against Trump.
Had these three pandemic related keys not turned against Trump, Trump would have nine keys, enough to win re-election. Now obviously this is just one model and we don’t have views into parallel universes. But it’s definitely worth taking seriously the model that correctly predicted the past two presidential elections, when many pollsters predicted one and or the other incorrectly.
Next, I plan to write an article detailing how the 13 Keys show that Bernie Sanders’ primary challenge to Hillary Clinton led to Trump’s victory in 2016.