Major news isn’t changing people’s mind on the election

Now that the president, his staff, and heavy hitters in the GOP tested positive for coronavirus late last week and into the weekend, the presidential race is yet again taking another turn. Just over two short weeks ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, causing the race to fill her seat to become a focal point of the presidential election.

So far, there’s been some polls registering tremors of change but, overall, most polling is finding marginal movement in the president’s standing with the public following these events.

There have been other moments when polling has shifted following breaking news events, but that change soon dissipated and reverted to roughly the same place the president has remained in for most of his tenure in the White House.

Similarly, the explicit inclusion of SCOTUS into the presidential campaign is energizing people already engaged with each party, polling finds. The vacant seat isn’t influencing the vote for a majority of independents. Each candidate breaks even here, with few in the middle won over to either side.

While the state of the race is relatively steady, the main topic of conversation on social media ebbs and flows quite a bit. Discussion around the Supreme Court briefly took oxygen away from the social activity around COVID, racism, and the environment. A similar dynamic at the end of August played out when police shootings resurfaced, and wildfires gripped many parts of the country. Yet, the conversation always returns back to the pandemic.

This was underscored when former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Directly following Ginsburg’s passing, her replacement’s announcement, and her casket lying in state, SCOTUS became the second most talked about election topic on the Political Atlas, second only to the coronavirus on social channels.

Now, the coronavirus makes up the bulk of the conversation in every part of the country, surpassing all other topics by a wide margin.

Directly following Trump’s diagnosis and the wall-to-wall coverage on the state of his condition, coronavirus surged to the forefront of people’s minds. Nearly every county in the country registered a high volume of conversation around COVID-19.

While those topics don't seem to be all together hurting the president, they also aren’t helping his chances. President Trump wants to be discussing SCOTUS and the economy. One of Trump’s major rallying points four years ago was the Supreme Court and his commitment to appointing conservative judges to federal courts. The economy remains a relative sweet-spot in match-up polling between him and Biden.

But, across many other issues, the president struggles to compete with Biden, namely when it comes to the coronavirus, the environment, healthcare, and racism, according to the polling. Healthcare and coronavirus are now front and center for many Americans, and the president has been unable to drive social conversation away from the pandemic Political Atlas tracking shows.

The president’s diagnosis is reigniting social conversation around one of his weakest issues in the polls, and people are either sympathetic or enraged by how he has managed his time as a patient. This forceful but evenly split action on social leaves each side roughly where it was before the news, even while so much has changed.

But, there is some evidence that people are growing tired. After Ginsburg’s passing and the politics surrounding her place on the court, many were growing fatigued by the breakneck speed of the news. In Pennsylvania, a Democratic woman between the ages of 55 and 64 told the US Ipsos syndicated online community that the decorum of Amy Coney Barrett’s fast-tracked confirmation didn’t sit well with her because “...This has been such a crazy and stressful year that we do not need any more crap to deal with.” 

Following President Trump’s diagnosis from a later iteration of the US Ipsos syndicated online community, another member reported: “Its Covid, Covid, Covid all day everyday. Its driving me nuts. I’m sure I’m not the only one.”

There is an overarching sense of fatigue with yet another historic, breaking news topic taking center stage. If prior activity on social media tells us anything, it’s that people can be enraged and engaged only for so long.