Originally Posted by
Walter Sobchak
It happens sometimes that an incumbent is so unpopular at the end of their term that people turn off of the candidate from the same party. W hurt McCain in 2008. The long shadow of Nixon hurt Ford in 1976.
It's rarer that an incumbent is so horribly unpopular that people come out to vote against him when he is still running. The clearest example since 1900 is probably Herbert Hoover in 1932. It would have happened to Johnson in 1968 if he had chosen to run again.
Other one-termers like Bush senior and Jimmy Carter weren't really hated, they just fell victim to a bad economy and in Bush's case a third-party candidate that drew a lot of votes from him. Hoover had a bad economy too obviously (Great Depression), but the difference with him was that he said loud and clear "I'm not doing shit about it, you're on your own," and people hated him for it.
Carter wasn't hated, that part is correct.
However, the belief among the 1980 general public was that he was a nice guy, but an incompetent President. They elected a peanut farmer in 1976 because he was the opposite of Nixon, and then they realized four years later that they elected a peanut farmer. On the other side, you had a grandfatherly former actor and governor who spoke really well, and he won easily.
The problem Democrats have is that the people who HATE Trump already hated him 4 years ago, and already showed up to vote against him 4 years ago. He still won. These people hate him even more now, but their vote still only counts once -- unless they show up multiple times in "no voter ID" states, which wouldn't surprise me. (However, I don't think it would be widespread enough to affect the results, so no, I'm not trying to plant the seeds of "stolen election" crap.)
Anyway, this election WAS going to be a competition between Trump's controversial behavior and unpresidential social media presence versus Biden's senility and creepy behavior.
Now it's going to be about the coronavirus. If we are doing better than expected in November, he will win. If we are doing worse, we will lose. Right now, "expected" itself is hard to define, as we are still rather early in the entire thing. Much of this will be out of Trump's control. For example, if a miracle treatment comes out in July, and the country roars back to normal, with a suddenly-booming recovery because everyone was itching to go out and do stuff, Trump will get credit and win. If we are in financial disaster in November, or if there is zero progress against the virus, he will probably lose.
It mostly comes down to Arizona, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania at this point, though I think Biden is taking PA because of his longtime popularity there. Iowa, Florida, and Ohio have become redder, and aren't the quite battleground states they used to be.