Trump Campaign Bets on Approval Rating Boost at Mercy of Virus

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings are delivering the highest approval ratings of his presidency, but that bump is at risk of fading before the November election — especially as deaths mount and scrutiny of the government response intensifies.

Trump’s average job approval rating hit an all-time high on Wednesday at 47.7%, according to RealClearPolitics. That’s a 3.6-point jump from 10 days ago and surpasses the previous record set in his first week in office.

But as the pandemic progresses along with the economic fallout that accompanies it, Trump is facing the greatest crisis of his presidency just seven months before the general election.

The White House has positioned Trump as a “wartime” president fighting an invisible enemy he said was introduced by China. He was made visible daily at the podium in lieu of the rallies that have sustained him politically.

In addition to canceling his rallies, Trump’s campaign has had to reconsider practically every strategy it was pursuing, including switching to a digital and advertising focus and not opening, at least for now, planned campaign offices in key states.

The briefings have emerged as a sober replacement for the rallies, putting Trump on the television screens of millions of households every day, with the presidential seal behind him.

Early in the coronavirus outbreak, polling showed that Trump’s decision to make Vice President Mike Pence the public face of the government’s response was a mistake, because it gave the appearance that the president had delegated the weighty responsibility to a subordinate, one Republican strategist said.

Voters perceived Trump as annoyed that he had to deal with the crisis, the adviser said. In response to open-ended questions from pollsters, they wondered how much the president really cared about the pandemic.

Trump has long defied the political odds, succeeding where other politicians might have failed, so even weeks of grim news on the virus might not derail him, especially as his opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, is having trouble breaking into the news cycle as the nation worries about the pandemic.

Trump’s handling of the crisis reached its lowest level the week of March 9, after a week of no briefings and mounting deaths. The White House decided Trump needed to speak every day, and he’s appeared at a briefing 18 out of 20 days since.

Unimpressive Bump

Pollsters and political scientists have observed a “rally around the leader” effect for decades, with popular approval of a president going up in times of crisis. But Trump’s isn’t as impressive as some of his predecessors.

“Every president gets a bump in a crisis. The bump he’s getting is not that big,” said B. Dan Wood, a political science professor at Texas A&M University.

Just as important as the size of the bump is the duration, because crisis-driven job approval numbers fade over time.

“The longer this goes on, the more his approval rating remains relatively high for him, the more likely that will help him on Election Day,” said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster.

But he said it’s impossible to know how long the higher numbers will last: “The thing is we can’t predict the future. It’s totally unprecedented.”

President Jimmy Carter saw a 16-week spike in the early days of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, and President George H.W. Bush’s lasted 41 weeks during and after the 1991 Gulf War. Both went on to lose re-election over economic issues.​

​Trump risks the same fate, with the American economy faltering as non-essential businesses close and unemployment spikes.

For now, the polling numbers are driving Trump’s response to the outbreak, with press briefings lasting as long as two hours nearly every day. White House officials see a direct link between the two.

“I attribute it to the fact that he gets out there every day and tells people here’s what happened today,” said Kellyanne Conway, a former Republican pollster who’s now counselor to the president. “I’ve had this conversation directly with the president.”

The virus has also forced Trump to adapt his messaging. He’s taken to referring to himself as a “wartime” president, calling Covid-19 an “invisible enemy.”

And though Trump still takes jabs at political enemies like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden, he’s increasingly tried to highlight bipartisan efforts to combat the coronavirus — something his internal polling shows resonates with voters.

Airing Grudges

And now, the briefings themselves have become a partisan flashpoint. Trump has used them at times to attack journalists, nurse grudges with governors and spread misinformation, leading some cable networks to break away from live coverage.

“The radical left-wing MOB is calling for the Lamestream media to STOP airing President Trump’s daily press conferences which provide an update on the invisible enemy threatening our nation,” a fund-raising email from the Trump campaign charged on Wednesday. “Their reasoning is that the president’s approval ratings have skyrocketed to an all-time high and they are worried about the magnitude of his reach to the American people. It’s madness.”

The rallies Trump enjoys were more than just a way to excite his core supporters. They were a reservoir of voter data, which campaign manager Brad Parscale typically outlined on Twitter: race, political party, location and voting history.

“The Trump campaign has a significant advantage because of our early and ongoing investment in data and technological infrastructure that began in 2015,” said Ali Pardo, a campaign spokeswoman.

Without that data, Trump and Republicans have to rely even more on social media like Facebook Inc., the Republican adviser said.

On March 21, dubbed its National Day of Action, the campaign’s supporters made 1.5 million calls from their homes, Pardo said. On those calls they directed people to the government’s coronavirus website, she said.

But physical outreach and courting of voter blocs has been hampered. Trump planned to aggressively court African-American voters in battleground states, with plans to open storefront offices in Miami, Orlando, and Philadelphia, among other cities. Those openings have been postponed, according to senior campaign officials.

Instead, the campaign is scheduling conference calls with minority voters, particularly in states like Pennsylvania, Florida and Arizona.

And it will take advantage of people being at home to see advertising on television and online.

America First Action Super PAC, Trump’s official super political action committee, said Wednesday that it planned to spend $10 million on advertisements in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, focused on Biden.

One Republican strategist, David Winston, pointed out that whatever efforts are going on now, voters will make their decisions in seven months.

It’s not certain that the current approval ratings, amid the coronavirus pandemic, will translate into November votes, Winston said, adding that in times of crisis, Americans tend to coalesce behind national leaders. Judgments on the handling of the crisis -- and whether it warrants another term -- come later.

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