Trump's performance against Biden reportedly improves after voters watch 90 seconds of a coronavirus briefing

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 15 April 2020

President Trump's daily briefings on the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic are apparently working to his political benefit, The Atlantic reports.

A Democratic strategist, speaking on condition of anonymity, described a private research initiative in which voters were shown a 90-second clip of a recent briefing. Trump's general election performance against his likely Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, reportedly improved by more than two percentage points after voters watched the clip. Considering most polls are indicating a tight contest, that's quite a shift after such a small amount of footage.

Per The Atlantic, part of the briefings' purpose is to serve as a platform for Trump to reclaim the narrative about his initial response to the coronavirus, and push the idea that the president acted swiftly. Trump initially downplayed the threat of the virus and suggested further response efforts were unnecessary. Similarly, The Atlantic notes, the National Republican Congressional Committee sent robocalls to more than 120,000 numbers over a three-day period in late March, during which people were polled about Trump's press coverage, followed by a "sympathetic female voice" expressing frustration with the media coverage of Trump's handling of the pandemic. Read more at The Atlantic.

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Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.

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