Dave: The approval rating of our PM (ScoMo) has gone-through-the-roof following the imposition of covid restrictions and the allied spending spree (3% of Australis's GDP) - which I suspect is more related to voter approval.
I recall reading that this dynamic often happens when a country goes to war and covid is a sort-of community war.
There can be no doubt that voters WILL mark the report-card of their country's leader according to how well the individual is perceived to have performed during the pandemic. The unfortunate fact is that Australia does not have a federal election soon - so ScoMo's shining pandemic halo may well diminish with time and it certainly will diminish with fading voter memory.
America's situation is of course very different. It's not clear how covid will impact the November exercise - but even from a foreigner's perspective, there most assuredly will be an effect.
I sit here reading very grim statistics about what's happening in USA and the numbers are absolutely staggering (and frighteningly desperate for locals, I suspect). Yes, to an extent, the media does accentuate the negatives, but even accounting for this tendency, it seems bad for many regions (accepting Uwe's point that the spread of the virus is fragmented across States) !
Politics is a quasi-religion in many countries and America seems to be no exception. So doubtless the views of Democrat/Republican fundamentalists won't alter - in the same way that Christian/Islamic/Buddhist faith can't be changed for religious fundamentalists.
But this group aside, it's not unreasonable to expect that the views of great-unwashed mass of citizens will be modulated by their perception of the Government's covid performance (measured by infection spread/deaths, community angst). Most certainly the Senate's $6 trillion allocation (a massive 30% GDP) will go some way in supporting the Republican case. But weighed against this fiscal injection will be the numbers .
And of course the other interesting and equally unknown matter is how will America run an election in a (post?) covid environment? Will the massive rallies that have been the hallmark of past elections be appropriate, how will covid fear in the community impact the already historically low voter participation and how will social distancing rules impact the practical aspects of the election in general? Remembering of course that it's highly unlikely that a covid vaccine will be available in November and even in the very small chance that it is available, it most certainly won't be distributed in the population in large numbers.
Perhaps the US election will be postponed - lot's of less likely things have happened across the world because of the pandemic (what was impossible is now not so)?
Don
