Early approval for a coronavirus vaccine before Election Day would benefit the Trump campaign, but not enough to make up for the economic damage and fatalities that have soured many voters on President Trump.
A vaccine announcement would not erase months of White House efforts to downplay the severity of the coronavirus pandemic, especially as the number of fatalities has now surpassed 150,000, said Douglas Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee.
“The key of the Biden campaign ad will be Trump saying, ‘Well there’s one case, not a big deal. It’s going to disappear as soon as it gets warm, it’s going to be done by Memorial Day,’” Heye told the Washington Examiner. “It’ll be all these things that have shown that they didn’t take it seriously to the level that they needed to.”
Approval of a vaccine for COVID-19 would be “the best news possible,” Heye said, “but the devil is in the details.”
The logistics of rolling out a vaccine would be daunting. The administration would need to have a plan in place for allocating doses. That task would be made more difficult by the fact that much of the public is hesitant about taking a vaccine for the coronavirus, especially if it is rushed.
“It will have very real political implications, like the questions of distribution,” he said. “How many vaccines are available, and who gets them? Those questions will be very complicated because we, of course, will operate under the assumption that there won’t be 320 million doses of them available.”
Vaccine candidates from Moderna, Pfizer, Novavax, and other biotech giants, have shown early promise but likely will not be proven to be both effective and safe before 2021. However, in the event that the Food and Drug Administration grants emergency use authorization to one of the vaccines currently in development, the president will be responsible for encouraging the public to get the vaccine.
The Trump administration has bet big on an extremely accelerated development of vaccines. Earlier this year, Trump launched Operation Warp Speed, a $13 billion initiative to fund vaccine research and development with the goal of delivering 300 million doses of a safe and effective vaccine starting in January 2021.
Trump said in May that he is “very confident” that a vaccine will be ready “at the end of the year” and has touted the speed at which pharmaceutical and biotech companies are working to develop and test vaccines thanks to funding through Operation Warp Speed. Meanwhile, top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has maintained a more reserved tone, saying he is “cautiously optimistic” that a vaccine will be ready by early 2021.
Apart from the administration’s efforts on vaccines, Trump has received poor ratings from the public for his coronavirus response. By the first week of July, the number of Republicans who approved of Trump’s COVID-19 response overall had fallen 11 points to 78%, with those who disapproved jumping to 18%. The number of Democrats who disapprove of Trump’s COVID-19 response has remained underwater since the pandemic began. The candid rhetoric that Trump employed through much of the 2016 presidential campaign, which lent him “entertainment value,” according to former Michigan Democratic congressman Bob Carr, will not be enough to win swing state voters in 2020.
“The White House and the administration it seems are all over the place,” Carr said. “And I think that that tends to increase people’s anxiety, that style. I think for a while, it was entertaining when it didn’t involve lives, you know, my life, the lives of my friends and family, my town.”
Prior to the pandemic, Trump’s job approval ratings were relatively high. Gallup polling from the week of Feb. 3, for example, showed his job approval rating at about 49%. In May and June, Gallup reported his approval ratings had fallen into the 30s when the number of people seeking unemployment benefits reached historic highs.
“If you went back in February and looked at where Trump stood, he was at least looking at a competitive race and maybe even say he had a slight advantage,” said John Fortier, director of governmental studies at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “It’s not good for an incumbent president that the economy turns bad or that there’s problems or unrest.”
A surprise vaccine approval before the presidential election would be good for Trump’s chances, Fortier said, but “a vaccine might not be the thing that wipes all that away.”
As states began to reopen in the spring after months of lockdowns that crippled economies, new monthly jobless claims declined. However, cases have surged across Sun Belt states, some of which were among the first to reopen. In recent weeks, unemployment insurance claims have climbed by the hundreds of thousands. Even if a vaccine were to be introduced before November, Heye said, it would not be a big enough win to make up for the “economic devastation.”
