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Trump will lose popular vote in 2020, election model predicts

A new national poll also shows the president trailing Joe Biden by double digits.
Image: President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting on May 20, 2020, in the Cabinet Room of the White House.
President Trump, in the Cabinet Room this week.Brendan Smialowski / AFP - Getty Images

WASHINGTON — As a result of the economic suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, a new election model forecasts President Donald Trump will lose the popular vote in November.

"An unemployment rate above its global financial crisis peak, household income nearly 6 percent below its pre-virus levels, and transitory deflation will make the economy a nearly insurmountable obstacle for Trump come November," Oxford Economics said on Wednesday, based on the firm’s state-based and national election models.

Before the coronavirus, Oxford Economics, which has a strong track record of predicting presidential elections, had forecast in the fall that Trump would win 55 percent of the popular vote. In April, as the coronavirus spread in the U.S., the model predicted that Trump would take only 43 percent of the popular vote in the 2020 presidential election, according to The Washington Post.

Trump won the Electoral College in 2016 while Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton took the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots.

Joe Biden, the apparent 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, leads Trump by 11 percentage points in a new national Quinnipiac University poll, 50 percent to 39 percent.

A similar survey conducted in April had Biden ahead by 8 points.

"What does the 11 point Biden lead tell us? At best for Team Trump, it says voter confidence in President Trump is shaky," Tim Malloy, Quinnipiac polling analyst, said. "At worst for them, as coronavirus cases rise, Trump's judgement is questioned — and November looms."

The poll surveyed 1,323 self-identified registered voters from May 14-18 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.