The recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has put a major dent in President Donald Trump's chances of winning the 2020 election, according to an influential election forecasting model.
NBC News reports that Oxford Economics, which has a strong track record of forecasting presidential elections, now sees Trump as all but certain to lose the popular vote this fall.
"An unemployment rate above its global financial crisis peak, household income nearly 6% below its pre-virus levels, and transitory deflation will make the economy a nearly insurmountable obstacle for Trump come November," the firm writes in explaining its latest forecast.
How dire is the situation for the president? The Oxford model projects Trump will receive just 35 percent of the vote this fall, and that it would "take nothing short of an economic miracle" for him to overcome that.
That said, no major party nominee has ever received just 35 percent of the vote, as even Herbert Hoover in 1932 managed to get 40 percent of the popular vote in the middle of the Great Depression.
George H.W. Bush, who lost the 1992 election, got only 37 percent of the popular vote, but that was with third-party challenger Ross Perot taking away millions of potential votes from both him and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton.
