Election matters—but it is the top of a pyramid whose base is, in our view, supportive of fixed income and credit whatever the outcome.

With the U.S. gearing up for election day, the investment community is still debating just how consequential the result could be for markets.

A blizzard of commentary and analysis has been generated from both the sell and buy sides. A potential change of leadership in the world’s biggest economy tends to attract scrutiny, and this year’s contest puts particularly stark choices in front of voters.

But skeptics point to the prospect of a vaccine overcoming the coronavirus pandemic, the extremely low bases from which economies stand to grow next year, and near-zero interest rates as far as the eye can see. Surely these take precedence over mere changes to U.S. fiscal, tax and regulatory policy?

From a fixed income investor’s perspective, we regard all of these as relevant factors. Thinking about them as a pyramid can help us prioritize them.

At the base of our pyramid—and, in our view, foursquare, immovable and solid—we have near-zero interest rates and accommodative monetary policy from the Federal Reserve and other major central banks. It’s difficult to see this changing regardless of who sits in the White House come February, how big next year’s fiscal stimulus is or how long it takes to get an effective coronavirus vaccine. In our view, that base is supportive of all fixed income assets.

The next level up in our pyramid is the coronavirus. How serious could the current resurgence in Europe and North America get, and how confident are we that a vaccine will be proven effective in the next couple of months?

If the news here is bad, investors may look harder at the election outcome because the need for substantial renewed fiscal support will likely be urgent. But if the news is positive, as we anticipate, markets will be able to refocus on economic and business fundamentals and look forward to re-opening and recovery. Stimulus and policy questions would likely take a back seat—after all, the 2020 stimulus packages were originally meant to support the economy only until the appearance of a vaccine or effective treatments for the virus.

The first two levels of our pyramid are supportive of credit, then, with a small risk of a very negative outcome if the vaccine and infection news is bad. Supply-and-demand dynamics currently add support: in October there was negative net issuance of investment grade credit, the first time we have ever seen that outside the sleepy month of December.