If the pandemic never happened what would the results have been?

[Schiff for Senate]

Biden was essentially the same kind of establishment candidate that Hillary was; if Trump had not been distracted by culture wars, he could have employed the same playbook he used against Hillary to win re-election.

Except, again, Biden was never as unpopular as Clinton. "Culture wars" like COVID-related restrictions and riots were probably the only reason the election was even this close.

He also very much did try to employ the same playbook he used against Clinton, it just didn’t stick.

And importantly, unlike Clinton, Biden wasn't caught off-guard. He was prepared and he didn't take WI/MI/PA for granted like she did, even when the polls said the states were going to go blue for sure (I remember seeing polls saying thinks like PA being Biden+7, that were pretty common pre-election).

The answer is Trump Wins Reelection, though, since the tipping-point state was just Biden+0.63 and we can't pretend that COVID19 didn't hurt Trump overall quite a bit.

[Schiff for Senate]

Agree with this as a prediction -

Trump wins with the 2016 map minus MI and NE 2nd.

(Except I disagree with OSR that NV would flip Republican.)

But obviously, these posts are completely correct as well and I don't think giving an exact map is really possible (though if forced to it would probably be the above results)-

The problem with this is that we don’t know what else would have happened if the pandemic didn’t. 

Without the pandemic, the 2020 election is a totally different race &, as a result, an incredibly hard-to-predict one at that.

Calthrina puts it well -

It's hard to say in the end, though I tend to believe Trump winning reelection without the pandemic is a myth. He was already one of the most unpopular presidents in history and had a relatively wide coalition against him. I'm not convinced he would have won otherwise, though for sure I can't rule it out.

Trump came so close to winning reelection even with the pandemic. Without the pandemic, I think he might have actually gotten over the finish line. It would have been close all the same, but Democrats would have had less of a persuasive argument to make to independents. Biden won largely because of moderate and independent voters who didn't think Trump was handling the pandemic appropriately or seriously enough and thought Biden would "right the ship."