January 20: Biden’s Approval Rating Is High Enough to Beat His Most Likely 2024 Opponent
There’s been a lot of buzzing lately about the president’s job approval ratings, so I gave them a close look at New York:
Midterm elections almost always serve as referenda on the perceived job performance of the president. It’s no accident that just prior to the two recent midterms (1998 and 2002) in which the party controlling the White House gained House seats, which is rare, the president’s job approval ratings were in the 60s. On three other occasions (1962, 1986, and 1990), presidents with job-approval ratings of at least 58 percent kept midterm losses for their party in the single digits.
With Democrats currently holding a five-seat margin in the House, President Joe Biden would probably need one of those very-high-job-approval moments to save his party’s control of the House in the 2022 midterms. Unfortunately, in this era of partisan polarization, a Biden boom in popularity is improbable. According to the FiveThirtyEight polling averages, the president’s approval rating peaked at 55.1 percent on March 22. It’s currently at 42.1 percent, and it is “underwater” (below his disapproval rating) by 9.8 percent. If Biden can turn the fairly steady downward drift in his approval ratings around, he can certainly help Democrats mitigate midterm House losses. On two occasions, presidents with pre-midterm approval ratings in the 40s lost only a handful of seats: Carter’s party lost 11 seats in 1978, with a Gallup rating of 49 percent, and Obama’s party lost 13 seats in 2014, with a Gallup rating of 44 percent. On the other hand, Democrats lost 53 House seats when Obama was at 45 percent in 2010 and 63 House seats when Clinton was at 46 percent in 1994. So Democrats can almost certainly kiss their trifecta goodbye, barring something unforeseeable.
The Senate is invariably another matter, since the particular “class” of senators up for reelection in any midterm has a huge impact on partisan performance. In 2018, to cite the most recent example, Republicans managed to gain two net Senate seats despite losing 40 net House seats, mostly because Democrats had an incredible 26-9 disadvantage in seats they had to defend. It was a terrible Senate landscape for Democrats, who, by contrast, face a marginally favorable Senate landscape in 2022. Still, a pretty reliable Senate model devised by Sean Trende projects that Democrats are likely to lose control of the upper chamber in 2022 if Biden’s job-approval ratings haven’t rebounded to the high 40s by Election Day.
In the longer term, there is a definite silver lining to Biden’s current popularity woes, reflected in this ostensibly very negative headline at FiveThirtyEight: “One Year in, Biden Has the Second-Lowest Approval Rating of Any President.” Guess who had the very lowest at this point in his presidency? That’s right: Donald J. Trump, whose approval rating was at 39 percent a year after his inauguration. If, as is currently more likely than not, the 2024 presidential election is a Biden-Trump rematch, you have to like Biden’s odds for a second term if he can improve his public standing even slightly between now and then. Yes, ex-presidents usually become more popular after they leave office. But they generally don’t insist on making the low point of their presidencies a signature moment, and defense of it a litmus test for their party, as Trump is doing with the Capitol riot and his broader campaign to steal the presidency. It’s as if George W. Bush had tried a 2012 comeback (and hadn’t been term-limited) based on the eternal righteousness of the Iraq War.
With better skill than he has showed lately and a bit of luck, Biden can make the midterms a nick rather than a grievous wound to his party. Then, like his friend and former boss Barack Obama, he could win reelection two years after being underestimated.
Regarding Steve’s question above, on election day undecided voters historically tend to vote 2 to 1 for the challenger (sometimes 3 to 1) so what you tend to see is a late movement for the challenger compared to the final polls.
The net effect of all this is that the incumbent’s actual poll number (Bush) reflects his ceiling, the max he can get, where as the challenger’s real number will be much higher than his current polling.
So where Bush is below 50% he is likely to be overtaken by the late surge for Kerry (according to the rule of thumb)
Please help me to understand. In the individual state
polls. If Bush is leading (by whatever margin), then
what differance does it make if he is below 50 ?
WaPo tracking poll just out shows Bush margin over Kerry by 1%–down from 4% yesterday. (But another Hawaii poll shows Bush up one point). T.J.
The two Nevada polls are encouraging, as are Rasmussen’s statewide polls for Michigan and Iowa. Also, Rasmussen shows Bush and Kerry separated by less than 1/2%. The ABC tracking poll now has Bush up by a mere 1%, while stating that Kerry had his best day of polling yesterday (Saturday) since October 2nd. That conflicts with Zogby who reports that on Saturday Bush reached 50% for the first time, with Kerry at 43%. Confusing, isn’t it? I think that this wide disparity in the polls reflects the fact that Kerry has large undereported support among young voters who 1) have only a cell phone, or 2) are more likely to be unavailable when surveyers call. I firmly believe that the nation will be surprised when this previously unheard from block of voters flock to the polls in record numbers.
I hope I’m not just seeing through blue-tinted glasses, but this and other recent posts seem to support the “undecideds breaking for challenger” assumption:
In both FL and NV, whichever poll finds the lower number of undecideds also has a better Kerry number. And in my home state of TN, a just-released Mason-Dixon poll –
http://tennessean.com/elections/2004/archives/04/09/60256115.shtml?Element_ID=60256115
– shows Kerry going from 16 points down to 12 down, *exactly* matching a 4-point decrease in undecideds from a month ago. I don’t hold out much hope for TN, but if this kind of evidence continues to mount, we may be in for some very pleasant surprises wherever Bush is at 49% or less.
And from this perspective the 43-43 “tie” in Hawaii is nothing to lose sleep over–unless of course you can use your insomnia to make GOTV calls to an appropriate time zone.
Nevada’s polls are open. I’m on my way up to work the precincts. Start the surge for Kerry!
Best Bumper Sticker of 2004 campaign was found in Puerto Vallarta, Mx:
“Pull the Cheney…Flush Bush”…only eight more days…hallelujah..goyo
WOW!!!
Maine Kerry 50
Bush 49
Zogby Intl..(I know)
This will be the week of the Great Breakout
Polishing the Ann Richards Turkey Fork
Ruy, what do you make of the Hawaii poll that has it dead even at 43%, with 10% undecided. I spend part of the year there and Hawaii’s about as Democratic as it gets so its shocking. Friends in Hawaii say it’s unlikely that Bush could win there, a little campaigning by Inouye for his veteran buddy Kerry is all what’s needed I was told.