This morning I was watching an item on MSNBC’s Morning Joe about the latest opinion poll about the coronavirus pandemic and how awful Donald Trump is in everything he does and says (I know it didn’t say that but it is MSNBC and Morning Joe so it’s the usual line – much the same way that everything bad in the word is Obama’s fault according to Fox News.)

While these figures are bad for Trump it should be remembered that:

• This is April and the general election is in November.   Back in 2016 at the same time whilst he had the largest percentage of the Republican party approval going through the primaries that would still equate to something much less than 42% of voters;
• Joe Biden, even with Donald Trump’s poor approval ratings & trust figures, still can’t get to more than 50% – in fact he lost 1% since the previous poll.

In short even through MSNBC didn’t spin it this way Donald Trump is far from out for the count and in fact there are many things that should give him hope as he only needs to get to around 47% of the vote providing he can get the vote out in his key states (last time he won with only 46% of the vote compared to Hillary Clinton’s 48%).   It is clear that his campaign is going to be blame someone else unless something goes well then it will be all his doing (This is not unique).  One of the biggest things that the voters will have on their minds come November will be the coronavirus, its handling and how it has affected their lives and so Trump has already lined up those people, organisation and country to blame:

• State Governors
• World Health Organisation
• China

Whether this is fair is moot and whilst I think he should not be President of the United States my views count for nothing (they don’t anyway but the main reason is that I am not a United States citizen).   I think if Joe Biden is the best that the Democratic Party can do then they are in trouble and so it is far from clear how Trump would lose.  I hope I am wrong but I wouldn’t hold out any hope that I am not.   After the last election I wrote:

 …I thought that there was a 60% chance that Mrs Clinton would have made it over the line whereas Trump was 40%.   However, I had little enthusiasm for Mrs Clinton it was just that she seemed much better than the alternative….  

~ 9th November 2016 ~

This time around I’m even less sure of Joe Biden and so the 49/42 split between Biden and Trump is about right – that still leaves 9% of the voters to persuade and Trump only needs around 4%.