Crude Coronavirus Scenario

[walleye26]

I don’t mean to get crude here, but I’ll ask for your opinions. If there’s a worst-case scenario here with Coronavirus where say 250,000 Americans die, wouldn’t that disproportionately hurt Trump? I say that because this virus generally impacts older Americans, and especially those with health problems. Coal mining areas in Pennsylvania and Ohio are especially at risk since things like black lung disease.
I hope this doesn’t happen, but could this seriously impact some swing states?

[AGA]

Yes, but the effect of people voting against him would be greater than the effect of his supporters dying and being unable to vote.

[RI]

A population loss of 250K nationally would not itself be enough to directly impact the results of the election, except perhaps in the rarest of cases.

[Sir Mohamed]

I don't intend to fearmonger here, but the worst case scenario is worse than 250,000 deaths. Way worse. We're talking about millions here.

[bagelman]

A close Florida could flip as a direct result of coronavirus deaths in a bad case scenario.

[GeorgiaModerate]

Yes, but the effect of people voting against him would be greater than the effect of his supporters dying and being unable to vote.

This.  If the number of deaths is large enough to demographically flip some close swing states, then the total number of deaths in the country would be catastrophically high.  In that scenario Trump would lose in a landslide.

[538Electoral]

Coronavirus likely won't impact any individual state results.

[Hammy]

Coronavirus likely won't impact any individual state results.

It could if turnout is affected but that's about all.

[swf541]

Worst case scenario is a death toll in the millions not 250k

[izixs]

Alright, lets go for the worst case scenario. Everyone gets the virus in the US. Death rate ends up averaging to 1%. So about 3 million people die directly from the disease. Related deaths, such as from people ending up on the street due to the economic collapse and starving to death, loss of health insurance leading to premature deaths from other causes, and the like add say another million to that number.

For the primary group, lets say the break down of the deaths is 2 million over 65, 1 million under 65. The other million deaths then lets say break down as 600k over 65 and the rest below naturally. We'll use the 2016 exit polls to estimate the president's support for those of these two group to be 52% for those over 65 and 45% for those under. If this percentage holds for the two groups, then he has potentially lost from both of these groups 1.352 million voters from the over 65 group and 630k from those under 65 for a total of 1.982 million fewer voters who supported him in 2016.

Of course this assumes all of those who died are voters, which is not likely. So let us multiply this number by the 55% voter turnout of 2016 to get 1.09 million or so. Similarly, of those who didn't vote for him, the approximate number would be about 1.11 million. Which would mean that the president loses fewer voters. However... he also lost the popular vote.

Assuming a similar fraction for third parties, we can estimate the worst case loses of voter populations for the democratic nominee. Clinton's support was 48.6% for those under 65 and 45% for those over. This then leads us through the same math to get 1.02 million fewer Clinton voters. This will lead then to a net difference of the two party vote of around 70 thousand. So... would this be enough to throw the election? Only if the margins are razor thin in the deciding states.

Instead, it is much more useful to not think about the grim numbers here but the general public's response to the response to the crisis. If the public views the loss of 4 million people as the tragedy that it is and realize this administration's bungled response lead to this result, they'll probably turn against him and his party by larger margins than 70k. But if for some reason the Republicans convinced all of the country that this is somehow fine and just go back to business as usual... a bit of a stretch, then I guess the net result based entirely off those who actually perish will be marginal?

TLDR: No, it would not likely impact swing states enough to cause a specific issue due to the specific cause of there being fewer of certain voters, but... in a real worst case scenario with millions dead, the impact of dropping the ball that much would result in a massive, negative shift, much larger than the demographic changes brought directly by the virus' impact.

[T'Chenka]

340 million population multiplied by 1% death rate equals 3.4 million American deaths.

With the rate of growth, total lack of preparedness and Trump STILL not handling this right day by day, it would be illogical to conclude that 1% of Americans dying is totally out of the question, based on the death rates we are seeing in other countries.

30% to 80% of the country is expected to eventually get COVID-19 at some point, so that 3.4 million deaths I mentioned already would put the death rate between 1.25% and 3.33%, which is proven to definitely be reachable with hospitals being overrun (see: Italy).

I would argue that if we're talking WORST case scenario, anything under 3.4 million is wrong based on the numbers.