Only one other world leader has caught coronavirus during an election campaign. He went on to win.
“Trump is the incumbent behind in the polls, while Abinader was a challenger favored to win the election, so they are different circumstances,” Geovanny Vicente Romero, a political strategist and CNN en Español columnist, told The Washington Post.
The Caribbean nation of 10.5 million was slated to vote in May but postponed its elections because of the pandemic. The Dominican Republic has been among the Caribbean nations hit hardest by the virus.
Abinader ran as an opposition candidate with the Modern Revolutionary Party (RPM), unseating the center-left Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) after 16 years in power. The Dominican-based Centro Económico del Cibao, a research and consulting firm, had put Abinader at a commanding lead of about 20 percent in both May and June.
But for about two weeks in June, Abinader and his wife, who also tested positive, were unable to campaign in public. That may have wound up bolstering his chances.
“While the incumbent government was busy defending its covid-19 response, Abinader contrasted this approach, having contracted the disease like more than 100,000 other Dominicans, and bringing concrete solutions to the campaign trail,” Romero said, referring to the disease the coronavirus causes.
The impact of a coronavirus diagnosis on the popularity of other current and aspiring world leaders is difficult to gauge.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was among the first world leaders to test positive. He suffered a serious case of the virus, ending up in an intensive care unit.
Although Johnson’s diagnosis provoked personal sympathy, it is not clear it provided him political gains. Data from British polling firms suggests his government saw a swell of popularity around his March 27 announcement that he had caught the virus, peaking at 52 percent that week in YouGov polling. But it appears to have been part of an early pandemic surge of support for the government that began a few days earlier.
Since the spring, Johnson’s approval ratings have declined steadily.
In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro had a mild coronavirus case and made a full recovery quickly after his diagnosis in July. Although he had previously dismissed the coronavirus as a “little cold,” Brazil has one of the largest outbreaks in the world, with more than 144,000 reported deaths from covid-19 so far.
The Brazilian leader’s approval ratings have improved during the pandemic. Brazilian polling firm PoderData found in a poll conducted in late September that 38 percent of the country approved of his job performance, compared with 30 percent who disapproved (27 percent gave him a mixed rating).
Some analysts have linked the improvements in Bolsonaro’s approval ratings to emergency financial aid given to Brazil’s poorest citizens — around $110 a month — that has broadened his appeal.
Bolsonaro appears to have changed his habits little. Even after testing positive for the virus in July, he continued to flout public health recommendations, an analysis by The Washington Post found.
Johnson’s own diagnosis prompted him to start an anti-obesity campaign.
“I was too fat,” Johnson said in a video released in July, calling on citizens to lose weight and get healthier to make them less likely to become seriously ill from the coronavirus.
Bolsonaro is up for reelection in 2022, and Johnson has an even longer wait until the next British election, slated for 2024, so the long-term political impact of their infections is hard to predict. In the United States, voters will weigh Trump’s diagnosis in the coming weeks, alongside his policies related to covid-19.
Romero said that one key similarity between the Trump campaign and Abinader’s main opposition in the Dominican Republic was a “relaxed” approach to coronavirus restrictions at election events, designed to boost attendance.
“The Dominican case was unsuccessful, as this level of carelessness helped tip the scales in clear favor of Abinader,” he said. “Time will tell for President Trump.”
