US, WASHINGTON (ORDO NEWS) — The motto of Biden’s campaign may be: “Do you have a better life today than 4 years ago?” In the era of a president, tons of jobs can be created. However, this does not guarantee either a good life for ordinary citizens, or the fact that the president will be re-elected.
Take Jimmy Carter. Over the four years in office in the US economy, 10.3 million jobs were created – an average of 215 thousand per month. Given the population growth (an increase of 45% since 1980), today this would amount to 310 thousand new jobs per month.
And yet in 1980, Ronald Reagan beat Carter, who won only in 6 states and scored 41% of the vote. Now let’s take President Donald Trump. In the first full 37 months of his reign (from February 2017 to February 2020), an average of 185 thousand jobs were created each month, 60% of what Carter created (taking into account population growth).
“Work, work, work!”, Trump will tweet, emphasizing the impressive, grandiose scale of what is happening in the era of his reign. And he really achieved impressive results: nearly 48 million Americans lost jobs, according to data on applications for unemployment benefits. 3.1 million people first applied for unemployment benefits on Thursday. Needless to say, amazing, grandiose! True, not in the sense in which Trump would like.
What will these huge numbers turn into for the chances of his re-election?
Firstly, it is already known how most states will vote this fall. According to forecasts, 232 voters are ready to vote for former vice president Joe Biden, only 204 for Trump.
Biden needs 270 votes to win, and Trump 269. Why 269? Because if the Electoral College draw 269-269, the elections are held in the House of Representatives, and the delegation from each state receives one vote.
Then the results of the November elections in the House of Representatives will become critical, because the vote will be held in the House. You may be surprised to know that this could lead to Trump’s re-election, given that Republicans can control more House delegations (26), even if they have fewer seats in general. Democrats control only 22 delegations, two other states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, divide delegations equally. If the ratio is 269-269, the Democrats may not be able to control a sufficient number of state delegations for Biden to win the election.
In any case, there are several states that in five months may have equal chances:
Florida (29 votes)
Pennsylvania (20)
Michigan (16)
North Carolina (15)
Arizona (11)
Wisconsin (10)
Trump and Biden understand that the road to the White House runs through these 6 states, which will bring 101 voters. Further, if you believe the idea “This is an economy, stupid!”, Then the growth of unemployment in these six states does not promise anything good to the president.
When Trump won the election 4 years ago, unemployment (as of October 2016) was low in all six states, from 3.9% in Wisconsin to 5.2% in Arizona. Still, Trump won four of these states by a slight margin: in Florida by 1.2 percentage points, in Wisconsin by 0.77 points, in Pennsylvania by 0.72 points and in Michigan by 0.23 points. In North Carolina and Arizona at 3.5 points in each state.
But if we look at the unemployment rate in these 6 most important states now, we get the following:
Florida: 12.9%
Pennsylvania: 15.1%
Michigan: 22.7%
North Carolina: 12.2%
Arizona: 12.6%
Wisconsin: 14.1%
If Trump barely won the majority of votes in these states when the situation was good, then what will happen now when things are doing very badly?
During the only discussion between Reagan and Carter, the former governor of California, making a closing speech, looked directly at the camera and asked the Americans a simple but destructive question: “Are you better off today than 4 years ago?”
The Americans answered no. They felt humiliated in the 1980s. They thought that the United States was not the same as before. That the world is laughing at them, that everything is getting out of control and that changes are needed.
This template is familiar to many today.
And I want to ask the question again: “Do you have a better life today than 4 years ago?”
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