There’s abundant evidence that if it were held today, a general election rematch of Joe Biden and Donald Trump would show the 46th president in serious trouble. He’s trailing Trump in national and most battleground-state polls, his job-approval rating is at or below 40 percent, his 2020 electoral base is very shaky, and the public mood, particularly on the economy, is decidedly sour.
The standard response of Biden loyalists to the bad recent polling news is to say “The election is a year away!,” as though public-opinion data this far out is useless. But it’s only useless if Biden turns things around, and while there’s plenty of time for that to happen, there has to be a clear sense of what he needs to secure victory and how to go about meeting those needs. Vox’s Andrew Prokop provides a good summary of possible explanations for Biden’s current position:
“One theory: Biden is blowing it — the polls are a clear warning sign that the president has unique flaws as a candidate, and another Democrat would likely be doing better.
“A second theory: Biden’s facing a tough environment — voters have decided they don’t like the economy or the state of the world, and, fairly or not, he’s taking the brunt of it.
“And a third theory: Biden’s bad numbers will get better — voters aren’t even paying much attention yet, and as the campaign gears up, the president will bounce back.”
The first theory, in my opinion, is irrelevant; Biden isn’t going to change his mind about running for reelection, and it’s simply too late for any other Democrat to push him aside. And the second and third theories really point to the same conclusion: The president is currently too unpopular to win in 2024 and needs to find a way to change the dynamics of a general-election contest with Trump.
There’s not much question that Biden needs to improve his popularity at least modestly. There is only one president in living memory with job-approval ratings anything like Biden’s going into his reelection year who actually won; that would be Harry Truman in 1948, and there’s a reason his successful reelection is regarded as one of the great upsets in American political history. There are others, including Barack Obama, who looked pretty toasty at this point in a first term and still won reelection but who managed to boost their popularity before Election Day (Obama boosted his job-approval rating, per Gallup, from 42 percent at the end of November 2011 to 52 percent when voters went to the polls 11 months later).
Given the current state of partisan polarization, it’s unlikely Biden can get majority job approval next year even with the most fortunate set of circumstances. But the good news for him is that he probably doesn’t have to. Job-approval ratings are crucial indicators in a normal presidential reelection cycle that is basically a referendum on the incumbent’s record. Assuming Trump is the Republican nominee, 2024 will not be a normal reelection cycle for three reasons.
First, this would be the exceedingly rare election matching two candidates with presidential records to defend, making it inherently a comparative election (it has happened only once, in 1888, when President Benjamin Harrison faced former president Grover Cleveland). In some respects (most crucially, perceptions of the economy), the comparison might favor Trump. In many others (e.g., Trump’s two impeachments and insurrectionary actions feeding his current legal peril), the comparison will likely favor Biden.
Second, Trump is universally known and remains one of the most controversial figures in American political history. It’s not as though he will have an opportunity to remold his persona or repudiate words and actions that make him simply unacceptable to very nearly half the electorate. Trump’s favorability ratio (40 percent to 55 percent, per RealClearPolitics polling averages) is identical to Biden’s.
And third, Trump seems determined to double down on the very traits that make him so controversial. His second-term plans are straightforwardly authoritarian, and his rhetoric of dehumanizing and threatening revenge against vast swaths of Americans is getting notably and regularly harsher.
So Biden won’t have to try very hard to make 2024 a comparative — rather than a self-referendum — election. And his strategic goal is simply to make himself more popular than his unpopular opponent while winning at least a draw among the significant number of voters who don’t particularly like either candidate.
This last part won’t be easy. Trump won solidly in both 2016 and 2020 among voters who said they didn’t like either major-party candidate (the saving grace for Biden was that there weren’t that many of them in 2020; there will probably be an awful lot of them next November). So inevitably, the campaign will need to ensure that every persuadable voter has a clear and vivid understanding of Trump’s astounding character flaws and extremist tendencies. What will make this process even trickier is the availability of robust independent and minor-party candidates who could win a lot of voters disgusted by a Biden-Trump rock fight.
So the formula for a Biden reelection is to do everything possible to boost his job-approval ratings up into the mid-40s or so and then go after Trump with all the abundant ammunition the 45th president has provided him. The more popular Biden becomes, the more he can go back to the “normalcy” messaging that worked (albeit narrowly) in 2020.
If the economy goes south or overseas wars spread or another pandemic appears, not even the specter of an unleashed and vengeful authoritarian in the White House will likely save Biden; the same could be true if Uncle Joe suffers a health crisis or public lapses in his powers of communication. But there’s no reason he cannot win reelection with some luck and skill — and with the extraordinary decision of the opposition party to insist on nominating Trump for a third time. Yes, the 45th president has some political strengths of his own, but he would uniquely help Biden overcome the difficulty of leading a profoundly unhappy nation.
I am with Grok. For example, Zogby predicted Ryan over Blagojevich in Illinois by a wide margin in 2002.
If Sept. 11 never happened, Bush would probably be winning — we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq
Are you sure about that? Even Paul O’Neil would beg to differ.
It’s All Good. He barely won when no one knew who he was, now they do, and if the silence of my conservative friends means anything, it means they are ashamed.
When the GOP won a small number of seats in 2002 (+5 in the House, +2 in the Senate net gains), they won on the back of GWBush, whose approval ratings were 70 approve/26 disapprove (USA/Gallup). Bush now has an anemic 46 approve/51 disapprove (USA/Gallup)! 42% LV want a generic Democrat for Congress, only 37% LV want a Republican (rasmussenreports) and Democrats have been preferred for a solid month! Bush will not have as much time to focus on boosting his congressional colleagues as he HAD TO in 2002. He has his own record to (try to) defend! Many moderate Republican candidates already will have to distance themselves from Bush because he is so unpopular! Even in a conservative district like KY-6, Republicans face defeat if they run on Bush’s record! Winning a Democratic seat by twelve points in a district that went for Bush 55-42% in the 2000 elections, shows just how vulnerable Republicans are in Congress! (dnc website: democrats.org) Democrats are in good shape to pick up another seat for South Dakota’s Representative in a June 1st election! (dnc website: democrats.org, http://www.hersethforcongress.org) Republicans are clearly vulnerable up and down the ballot! Great turnout in November and abyssmal job approval of Republic policies and GWBush means democrats may just be taking back Congress AND the White House!
Why LV doesn’t track RV: One thing people often get wrong is the fact that the SAME sample of 1,000 voters or so produce both the RV and the LV numbers. The difference is, the LV calculation includes one more “weight” for each response. So if, in the pollster’s mostly subjective opinion, a certain percentage of registered R’s is likely to vote in November, and a certain percentage of men, and of older voters, and you are an older R man, your answers get “counted” more than, say, a young D woman. Problem is, this early in an election cycle, you can’t really rely on whether people SAY they’re going to vote, because who the heck knows? Most people aren’t paying attention yet. So you go with past elections as your model. Which is patently silly, since all elections are different (this one, I’m guessing, particularly so).
Just remember that when a poll produces both LV and RV numbers, all that’s happening is the pollster is subjectively multiplying the Kerry and Bush numbers from the RV poll with some factor he/she’s come up with based on whatever ideosyncratic technique she/he wants. We can do the same thing. I, for one, believe loads of Dems will show up this Fall who didn’t in 2000. So my LV poll will take a decent RV sample, say Gallup’s, and “increase” (via weighting by a factor of 1.1) the Dem sample by 10%. So my LV result, which basically has as much credibility as Gallup’s, will show Kerry with a 3-4 point lead among LV’s.
It’s all a game right now. As Ruy says, stick with the RV’s until, oh, about Labor Day.
The latest gallup poll also shows among that national adults (both registered voters and unregistered adults) Kerry is doing better and/or Bush is doing worse on most dates, granted by small margins. But these findings are repeated themselves and show that registering more voters, especially in swing states and in targeted urban/suburban/ideopolis areas is more likely to aid Kerry rather than Bush. This shows that increased effort into voter registration/mobilization efforts will likely pay large dividends for Democrats in 2004. To any and all encouraged by this prospect, I urge you to volunteer your time and energy (or even just donate) to the voter registration efforts like those by America Coming Together or your local Democratic Party or labor union or church congregation. We need all the help we can get and there is certainly good reason to believe that all this help will pay off up and down the ballot. Wouldn’t it be great to give President Kerry a like-minded Congress as well! Republicans are vulnerable! THis is the year we can take back our country!
While Iraq tragedies are taking away from Kerry being able to keep his face in the main stream press, I keep reading that Bush has taken away the economy and jobs as a campaign issue. Not so, I say. I have been skeptical of the last two months jobs numbers and now realize that I am not alone. John Crudele of the New York Post has an interesting article discussing this today. Too bad the rest of the United States electorate does not read this. If the information in this article were known by the public, coupled with the Bush failures in Iraq, plus the failures of his War on Terrorism, this elction would be (as George Tenet would say) a slam dunk.
So what CAN Kerry do about Iraq? Oh politically its all good, but substantively I’m depressed about it.
Zogby was the only one to accurately predict Gore’s 2000 victory, but he’s missed some biggies, too. He’s the Sammy Sosa of polling–when he hits it, he hits it square, but when he misses it’s brutal.
The information on polls given in above posts for ncpp.org and ayresmchenry.com are not available. There are no such web sites unless the wrong information was given. I tried accessing these sites twice and they do not exist nor is there a link at 2.004k.com.
If John Kerry loses this election I’m moving out of the country. If GWB is reelected after all the crap that’s come out in just the past year, I’ll give up all hope. The crazy thing is that there’s so much controversy about GWB’s administration that something like the leaking of Plume’s identity has taken a total backseat. In any other administration, I think this issue alone would’ve dominated the news cycle for a good long time. Forget about how the administration shifted $700mm to prepare for an invasion of Iraq.
It really is unbelievable how much this administration has TOTALLY SCREWED UP everything they’ve tried to do. But even with all the foul-ups, NOBODY has been fired or even resigned! Apparently accountability is only an issue for anyone who is not involved with the Bushies. I wish someone would replay the testimony of Wolfowitz when he testified that Shinseki’s opinion it would take several hundred thousand troops to stabilize Iraq as “irresponsible and way off base.”
This is kind of off topic, but this is a reeeeally good site:
http://home.comcast.net/~gerrydal/
it’s somebody’s allocation of electoral points, but it’s based on recent polls, etc. i am most interested in how competitive states like Maryland, Arkansas, and Georgia are.
Sept 11’s effect on Bush’s popularity is a little complicated.
If Sept. 11 never happened, Bush would probably be winning — we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq, budget wouldn’t be such a mess, and most importantly the economy would be doing quite well.
Sept 11 gave Bush a huge boost and at first he deserved it for leadership against Al Qaeda — but the fact is he completely screwed up the War on Terror and created this fiasco in Iraq. This is becoming apparent to more people every day.
Which, by the way, ought to be the basic line of attack for Democrats — not that Bush is a liar or an evil person, but that he simply has made a mess of everything.
Here’s another poll, released today by Ayres, McHenry & Associates:
http://www.ayresmchenry.com/docs/AMA%20National%20Survey%20Packet.pdf
It has results broken down by Red, Blue and Purple states. Kerry seems to be doing better than Bush in the purple swing states.
( link found at http://2.004k.com/latest/ )
A report on the accuracy of various 2000 election-eve polls is available at:
http://www.ncpp.org/poll_perform.htm
Sept 11 was THE best thing that ever happened to gwb…While im dismiissive of the stories that he knew about it, I honestly dont believe he would take
it back if he could. The tragedy provided him with
political capital he otherwise never would have
The most striking thing about Bush’s poll numbers is the steady, almost linear downtrend ever since he took office. The fact that he was able to squander the huge overnight boost he received on 9/12/01 just shows he is a fundamentallly flawed politician. Where would his support be today if it weren’t for Osama and those 20 terrorists?
Why would his RV go up 6 points, at the exact same time as his LV went down 1 point?
My guess is, there’s a little statistical noise there. Probably, if there had been a bigger sample size, both categories would have been up 2 or 3 points.
I believe that the reason Zogby’s final poll
in 2000 was more accurate than the others was
simply that he kept polling on Monday, the day before
the election, while the others stopped on Sunday.
As you may recall, there was a shift toward Gore at
the end, and the other pollsters missed part of it
because of stopping polling on Sunday.
Does anyone besides me find it utterly appaling that these polls show there is a big segment of the voting public out there that is “for war” when it seems we are WINNING and “against war” when we seem to be LOSING?
In other words, this specimen doesn’t care what the purpose of the war is — just that we win. ” Go ahead and glass some towel heads and I’ll see you at Starbucks.” And I am sure when you ask them they think the war was justified — or not — on “principle.”
I need a drink.
Unlike some people I have no interest in an impeachment. The thugs proved in ’98 that impeachment is just a parlimentary strong-arm tactic. What I want is an electoral count of 538-0 come November.
thanks. zogby seemed like the best bet.
In 2000, almost all polls predicted GWB as the popular vote winner by 2 or 3 points. Zogby called it a dead heat, and also made the right call on every state but one. (Never can remember whether it was OR or NM.)
speaking as a horse-race obsessive: anybody have a recommendation of which poll presents the most accurate information?
I know . . . I know . . . polling is an art not a science. but still, it’d be helpful to have a sense of which poll is the best to watch. and obsess over.
woo hoo!!!!! goodbye george bush!!!!
not the most substantive response, but justified.
anyway, I’d agree w/ zogby that this election is kerry’s to lose.
fingers crossed.