The economic recession in the United States caused as a result of the coronavirus pandemic could lead president Donald Trump to suffer a historic defeat in the upcoming presidential election scheduled to happen in November 2020, based on a prediction by a national election model.

The model, which has reportedly predicted the winner of the popular vote in 16 of the past 18 elections, has now forecasted that Trump will lose in a landslide, securing only 35 percent of the popular vote. According to reports, the model by Oxford Economics uses unemployment, disposable income and inflation to forecast election results to predict the outcome of the elections. The report from the international news agency further mentioned, That's a sharp reversal from the model's pre-crisis prediction that Trump would win about 55% of the vote. And it would be the worst performance for an incumbent in a century. The model has correctly predicted the popular vote in every election since 1948 other than 1968 and 1976 (although two candidates lost the popular vote but won the presidency in that span, including George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016).

Oxford Economics wrote in the report, It would take nothing short of an economic miracle for pocketbooks to favor Trump, a nearly insurmountable obstacle for Trump come November. The economy would still be in a worse state than at the depth of the Great Depression. According to the report, another state-based election model run by Oxford Economics that incorporates local economic trends and gasoline prices predicts Trump will badly lose the electoral college by a margin of 328 to 210. That model forecasts that seven battleground states, including Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri and North Carolina, will flip to Democrats. The report added, We would expect these states to experience significant economic contractions and traumatic job losses that would likely swing pocketbook vote.

However, Greg Valliere, chief US policy strategist at AGF Investments has stated that these models have no track record of predicting elections during pandemics. Traditional models work in normal times. But we're not in normal times right now. If the election were held today, former Vice President Joe Biden would probably win. But the next six months will give Trump time to reframe the debate around Biden and pin the blame for the pandemic on China.

Further adding that the models don't account for potential shifts in the pandemic, the policy strategist mentioned, If new infections really pick up, people will conclude Trump opened the country too soon. But if new infections drop, Trump will get some credit.

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