US election 2020: Donald Trump faces coronavirus spike in Midwest states he needs the most
- With new infections raging, disapproval of US president’s handling of pandemic means tight races with Joe Biden in Wisconsin and Iowa
- Trump continues to insist country is ‘rounding the turn’ on virus, an assertion that has drawn rebukes from public health experts
Gabe Loiacono is the kind of voter US President Donald Trump can ill afford to lose. He lives in a pivotal county of a swing state that is among a handful that will decide the presidency.
A college history professor who last cast a ballot for a Democrat more than 20 years ago, Loiacono is voting for Democrat Joe Biden because he thinks Trump has utterly failed in his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
“President Trump still does not seem to be taking the pandemic seriously enough. I wish he would,” said Loiacono. He said he never thought of Trump as “all bad” but added, “There is still too much wishful thinking and not enough clear guidance.”
And now the virus is getting worse in states that the Republican president needs the most, at the least opportune time. New infections are raging in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the upper Midwest. In Iowa, polls suggest Trump is in a toss-up race with Biden after carrying the state by 9.4 percentage points four years ago.
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Trump’s pandemic response threatens his hold on Wisconsin, where he won by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, said Marquette University Law School poll director Charles Franklin.