WASHINGTON • Coronavirus cases are skyrocketing in Republican-leaning Sunbelt and interior states, where shifting attitudes about the virus and United States President Donald Trump's handling of it could spell more trouble for his re-election effort.
New cases have exploded in particular in Arizona and Florida, battlegrounds that Mr Trump must retain to win a second term.
Jacksonville, Florida, where the President relocated the Republican National Convention, had the fastest-growing rate of infection of any metropolitan area in the US for the week ended last Saturday, according to Evercore ISI.
The convention site was changed after North Carolina's Democratic Governor Roy Cooper baulked at holding a gathering in Charlotte, as planned since 2018 when it was the only city to officially submit a bid, at full capacity.
The slide in support for Mr Trump occurred as he stopped talking about the virus and masks to focus almost entirely on reopening the economy, a risky gamble that so far appears to be backfiring.
Pew Research Centre polls show his approval is slipping fastest in the 500 counties where the number of cases has been more than 28 deaths per 100,000 people.
Pew surveyed voters in late March and the same people again in late June, and found 17 per cent of those who approved of the President in March now disapprove.
The shift came almost equally among Democrats and Republicans, men and women, and college graduates and non-graduates. But those who live in counties with a high number of cases were 50 per cent more likely to say they no longer approve of Mr Trump.
And older voters, who have typically backed Mr Trump in the past, are abandoning him at the same time the virus is hitting those aged 65 and above the hardest.
In six key battleground states, Mr Trump is now trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 6 percentage points among voters aged 65 and older, according to a New York Times-Siena College poll conducted from June 8 to 18 in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Seniors there disapproved of his handling of the pandemic, 52 per cent to 45 per cent. And by a 26-point margin, those voters said the federal government should prioritise containing the pandemic over reopening the economy.
Mr Biden is leading by 6 percentage points in Arizona and by 6.4 percentage points in Florida, based on the RealClearPolitics polling averages for those states.
The shift of virus cases from Democratic-leaning, densely populated cities like New York, Chicago and Boston into the Sunbelt and rural America has been swift and dramatic.
The states that Mr Trump carried in 2016 accounted for 75 per cent of new cases in the seven days ending last Saturday, though they represent only 57 per cent of the US population.
As recently as May 1, when Texas began its reopening and many Republican-led states followed, only 34 per cent of new cases were from those states.
On June 4, they first accounted for a majority of new cases, according to a seven-day rolling average.
Within that same timeframe, Mr Trump's support has dwindled in states long considered Republican strongholds. Mr Biden narrowly led Mr Trump in Texas - 45 per cent to 44 per cent - a state the President won by 9 percentage points in 2016.
In Georgia, which Mr Trump won by 5 points in 2016, Mr Biden was up 47 per cent to 45 per cent in a Fox News Poll taken from June 20 to 23.
The virus' geographic shift has begun to unify political leaders over the wearing of face masks, a means of protection against the virus that has become a political identity badge when Covid-19 was attacking coastal, largely Democratic areas.
Mr Trump at one point suggested that wearing a mask was a sign of opposition to his re-election. He went ahead with a June 20 rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma and complained in a tweet that critics were trying to "Covid shame" his campaign into cancelling the event.
But last week, he began to soften his stance on wearing a mask, saying he might wear one, shortly after numerous Republican leaders began to break with his opposition to social distancing and other measures.
Vice-President Mike Pence, who recently dismissed concerns about a second wave of cases as "overblown" and media "fearmongering" in a Wall Street Journal opinion article, used a trip to Texas on June 28 to urge the public to wear masks, saying it is "just a good idea".
The US is the worst-hit country in the world, with almost three million infections and more than 132,000 deaths.
Rising cases in 39 states cast a shadow over the Fourth of July celebrations as health experts worried that holiday parties will cause a further spike in cases. After towns and cities cancelled annual fireworks displays to avoid large gatherings, many Americans launched bottle rockets and roman candles from streets and backyards to commemorate Independence Day.
In the first four days of this month alone, 15 states reported record increases in new cases .
In Phoenix, Arizona, people gathered last Saturday without masks or social distancing to listen to a speaker at a rally against restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus.
"We opened way too early in Arizona," Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego told ABC. She said the city was in a "crisis related to testing", with people waiting in eight-hour lines in their cars to find out if they were infected.
BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
