Pretty easy to see here how the Plague cost Trump the election.
Trump had every opportunity to manage the "plague" responsibly and sensibly, and he didn't do that.
If he handled it like any number of other Governors did, he'd be cruising.
He even had an example to follow, he just had to copy Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo actually was fairly unpopular and had an underwater approval rating in New York before the coronavirus pandemic (
Link) and by May he was on pace to become Eternal God-Emperor of New York by popular acclamation.
The word was that Trump was watching Cuomo's daily briefings in March and April and trying to emulate them. Of course, this resulted in gems like "the virus will disappear by Easter" and "we should try injecting bleach to cure coronavirus".
