What Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis means for the New York GOP

With suburban moderates already giving President Donald Trump low marks for his handling of the pandemic before he tested positive for the coronavirus, Friday’s “nightmare” scenario for the Trump campaign won’t make it any easier for Republicans in key down-ballot races this November.

Republicans were already running behind in many swing districts upstate and downstate, and seeing Trump’s positive test for the coronavirus after downplaying its dangers certainly won’t help the GOP turn things around. Just 19% of self-described political moderates, and about a third of suburbanites and upstaters, approved of the way that Trump has handled the pandemic, according to a new Siena College poll that surveyed likely New York voters in late September. As cases began surging in the state in late September, nearly 3 in 4 respondents said they approved of how Gov. Andrew Cuomo (whose overall job performance rating now sits at 61% ) has handled the pandemic thus far.

These numbers are pretty much unchanged from months ago – and that is exactly why the New York GOP should be worried. Many state Republicans (though not all of them) have echoed Trump’s messaging on “law and order” politics as they try to regain lost political ground from two years ago when the Democrats flipped the state Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

Showing voters how the president’s decision-making endangers those around him only adds to the Democrats’ advantage on the pandemic while taking attention away from issues that are more favorable to Republicans. That could change by Nov. 3, but we first have to see what Trump does with his newly announced quarantine.