Some insights from excerpts of a FiveThirtyEight chat in response to the question, “Is Biden’s Approval Rating Really Rebounding?”

sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): In the last two weeks or so, President Biden’s approval rating has ticked up from 41.1 percent to 42.9 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker.¹ The share of Americans who disapprove of the job he’s doing has ticked down, too, from 53.6 percent to 52.3 percent.

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, senior elections analyst): It’s impossible to totally disentangle all the events of the past month or so, but I think the simplest answer (which is usually the right one) is the crisis in Ukraine.

According to Marist/NPR/PBS, Biden’s approval/disapproval spread on the issue of Ukraine shot up from 34/50 in mid-February to 52/44 in early March. His overall approval/disapproval increased from 39/55 to 47/50. And according to Morning Consult/Politico, his approval/disapproval on Ukraine went from 42/45 in late February to 46/42 in early March. His overall approval/disapproval went from 41/56 to 45/51 over that same span….And I think overall media coverage has had more to do with that than the State of the Union.

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): A recent Morning Consult poll indicated Democrats and independents were driving the shift in Biden’s approval

geoffrey.skelley: It’s really hard to say. Some polls have shown Biden gaining, while others have shown his approval largely unchanged. For instance, CBS News/YouGov put Biden’s approval at 44 percent in late February, and at 43 percent (so basically the same) a week and a half into March.

nrakich: Yeah, Quinnipiac also found his overall approval/disapproval mostly unchanged, from 35/55 in mid-February to 38/51 in early March, even as Americans warmed to his handling of Ukraine, which went from 34/54 to 42/45.

sarah: So … maybe Biden’s approval rating isn’t rebounding?

ameliatd: Well, I think it’s important to remember that this is happening in the context of a big spike in gas prices — which would normally be terrible news for a president’s approval rating.

ameliatd: One thing that is shifting, though, is that Americans are more likely to see Russia as an enemy and more likely to see Ukraine as a friendly country or an ally. Interestingly, that shift is happening among both Republicans and Democrats, which could explain why we’re not seeing more of a shift in Biden’s approval rating. People are having a reaction to the war — maybe even an emotional one — but it’s dampened by partisanship.

nrakich: Well, his approval rating on the pandemic has actually improved. In fact, in our coronavirus presidential approval tracker, he rose above water in early March for the first time since early January.

sarah: There’s also some evidence that Americans don’t trust Democrats to handle the pandemic as much as they once did. A recent Wall Street Journal poll found that voters thought Democrats were best able to handle the pandemic — compared to Republicans — by an 11-point margin, but that’s down 5 percentage points from mid-November….Moreover, as Geoffrey said, the pandemic isn’t the key issue it once was for voters; instead, it’s the economy. And on that issue, Biden gets abysmal ratings. Sixty-three percent of voters said they “somewhat” or “strongly” disapproved of Biden’s handling of inflation and rising costs in that Wall Street Journal poll, with 47 percent saying they thought Republicans were best equipped to handle inflation, versus 30 percent who preferred Democrats.

All of these comments could be written in sand, depending on what happens over the next few months with headline issues, like Covid, inflation and the Ukraine. There is a historic pattern of the President’s party losing seats in congress in its first midterm election. It looks like inflation will be an additional negative factor for Biden and the Democrats, while Covid and the Ukraine crisis could play out in their favor….or not.

In addition, a host of other issues, demographic factors, candidate and campaign quality, voter suppression and partisan election counts could all play a role in midterm election outcome. Even if historic patterns prevail, Biden and the Democrats can minimize the damage with smart strategy.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Is the GOP Becoming the Party of the Multiracial Working Class?

In my view, Democrats are far too complacent about this possibility. I discuss in my latest at The Liberal Patriot:

“Republicans have increasingly been talking about becoming the party of the multiracial working class. This is less far-fetched than you might think. After all, in a loose sense they already are. In the 2020 election, Trump carried the overall working class (noncollege) vote by 4 points (Catalist two party vote), about the same margin he had in 2016. The same data source also shows Republicans carrying the working class Congressional vote in three of the last four elections (the exception was 2018 when the working class vote was split down the middle between Republicans and Democrats).

Democrats have generally comforted themselves that their poor performance among the working class was purely a matter of white working class voters, who they presumed were motivated by retrograde racial and cultural attitudes. But since 2012, nonwhite working class voters have shifted away from the Democrats by 18 margin points, with a particularly sharp shift in the last election and particularly among Hispanics. This gives Democrats’ nonchalance about their losing record among working class voters a bit of a whistling past the graveyard quality.

Data since the 2020 election confirm a pattern of declining Democratic support among the nonwhite working class. Put another way: education polarization, it’s not just for white voters anymore. As a result, Democratic strength among the multiracial working class continues to weaken.”

The Medicare for all cause has been derailed by grim political realities and distractions, including Covid, conservative Democrats and now Ukraine. In addition, experiments with state level ‘single payer’ systems have also tanked, Jean Yi reports at FiveThirtyEight. But Yi’s article also provides a more encouraging discussion of the possibilities for the public option at the state level. as Yi, writes, “Americans may have an appetite for a public option, or government-run health insurance that people can opt into at the state level.”

Yi explains that ” Three states (Colorado, Nevada and Washington) have already passed a public option. It’s not single-payer health care reform, but it’s possible that we might see more states adopt their own public-option reforms…..Colorado and Nevada, for instance, successfully passed a public option in 2021, joining Washington, which passed one in 2019. Colorado’s success in advancing a public option is particularly striking, given that almost 80 percent of people voted against its single-payer proposal in 2016.” Further, Yi writes,

To be sure, though, efforts to implement a public option aren’t without their own challenges. In 2021, during its first year of implementation, Washington state’s public option struggled to enroll people and get health care providers to agree to lower payment rates. State lawmakers have tried to fix this problem by introducing legislation that would require more providers to participate and bring down premiums by increasing subsidies. Proponents have also cautioned that it might take years before the public option really gains a foothold with Washington state residents.

It’s not clear yet how successful these state-run public option plans will be, but it is possible that a public option may prove more popular than single-payer. For starters, while single-payer health care is popular among Democrats, the public option still polls much better among Republicans and independents. According to a Morning Consult/Politico poll from March 2021, the public option was roughly as popular as Medicare for All among Democrats — about 80 percent said they supported each. But support for the public option was much higher than support for Medicare for All among both Republicans and independents. Just 28 percent of Republicans and 50 percent of independents supported Medicare for All versus 56 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of independents who supported a public option.

Moreover, a public option may align more naturally with Americans’ existing views on the role of government in health care. Polls have long found that Americans still want a choice in their health care, even though they believe that providing health insurance to the uninsured is the government’s responsibility.

Ultimately, any health care reforms would be easier to implement on a federal level than a patchwork, state-by-state approach. But Washington, Colorado and Nevada remain important tests of state governments’ ability to implement a public option in lieu of action by the federal government. It’s not single-payer, but it’s still some of the most consequential health care reforms in decades — and a potential sign of where the debates over health care are heading.

The old cliche about states being “laboratories of democracy” has limited application when it comes to providing decent health care for all citizens. But the public option at the state level, which is based on giving consumers a choice between public and private insurance coverage, may have a brighter future — particularly if the experiments with it in CO, NV and WA have a good track record in a couple of years. If that happens, Democrats can lead the way forward.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

The Economic Left and Politics

They get some important things right! If only they’d stick to those, we could actually get somewhere. John Halpin explains at The Liberal Patriot.

“If we are to build a new politics for America based on principles of liberal nationalism, it’s important to examine and incorporate good ideas from around the ideological spectrum that are helpful to the causes of individual freedom and national economic strength in all parts of the country.

Last week’s column examined some of the best concepts from conservatives, including notions of subsidiarity and localism, common sense and tradition, and concerns about unintended consequences in policy making. Today’s column will look at some of the best ideas emanating from the economic left—ideas that serve as good companions to those conservative ideas about markets and government by offering important corrections to private sector activities.

While conservatives remind us of the problems of big government and the benefits of local actions, the economic left reminds us about the problems of big business and the benefits of collective goods and universal social insurance protections.”

Read the rest at The Liberal Patriot!

At brookings.edu, William A. Galson makes the case that “The invasion of Ukraine unites a divided America,” and writes:

By the standards of today’s polarized politics, the unity members of Congress displayed on Ukraine at President Biden’s State of the Union address was extraordinary. The hall was dotted with the blue and gold colors of the Ukrainian flag, and the introduction of Ukraine’s ambassador evoked a prolonged and passionate ovation….To an extent rarely seen these days, the American people are united across lines of partisanship, ideology, race, and ethnicity—indeed, across every demographic marker—on the nature of the threat, who is responsible for the war, and how to respond to it.

Galston shares some polling data:

Polling conducted right before Biden’s speech showed that the people are paying attention, with 65% saying they’ve heard a lot about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. About 8 in 10 Democrats and Republicans sympathize more with Ukraine than Russia, and three quarters say they care who wins the war. Huge majorities of both Democrats and Republicans believe that Russia wants to reestablish the border of the Soviet Union and that Ukraine wishes to remain independent.

These attitudes represent more than moral sympathy for Ukraine’s heroism in the face of Russian aggression. Large majorities of both parties believe that what happens in both Russia and Ukraine affects the United States “a lot.” 49% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans believe that Russia is “an immediate and serious threat” to the United States, and majorities of both political parties think that the chance of a new Cold War is higher than it was five years ago. 46% of Democrats and Republicans fear that war between the United States and Russia is very or somewhat likely.

There is also a strong bipartisan consensus on how the United States should respond to the Russian invasion. Supermajorities of both parties favor imposing economic sanctions on Russia and Putin and sending financial aid and weapons to Ukraine. 54% of both Democrats and Republicans favor sending troops to reinforce our NATO allies in Eastern Europe, but there is bipartisan opposition to sending US forces to fight the Russians in Ukraine.

Galston adds, “Americans are in no mood to end the war by rewarding Russian aggression. Across party lines, they oppose promising Russia that Ukraine will never join NATO, they oppose allowing Russia more influence in former Soviet countries, and they oppose pulling back NATO troop deployments in Eastern Europe.”

However, Galston wites, ” These opinions are not set in stone, especially in an election year. For example, Republicans’ support for sanctions falls—more than Democrats’ support does—if sanctions lead to an increase in fuel prices. Still, the degree of agreement on the fundamentals of the invasion is remarkable and seems likely to persist.”

It’s good news indeed that the American people are uniting in opposition to Putin’s invasipon of Ukraine.   The question now is whether Putin’s invasion will united, or further divide, Republican elected officials.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Molly Murphy and Brian Stryker at Impact Research (Biden’s polling firm) have some excellent advice for Democrats. This is no longer an option but a necessity if Democrats are not to fall even farther behind the public mood. They need to see restoring a sense of normality as their number one task.

“After two years that necessitated lockdowns, travel bans, school closures, mask mandates, and nearly a million deaths, nearly every American finally has the tools to protect themselves from this virus. It’s time for Democrats to take credit for ending the COVID crisis phase of the COVID war, point to important victories like vaccine distribution and providing economic stability to Americans, and fully enter the rebuilding phase that comes after any war.

Declare the crisis phase of COVID over and push for feeling and acting more normal. Thanks to Democrats, we are nowhere near where we were two years, or even one year ago. Democrats have a tremendous opportunity to claim an incredible, historic success – they vaccinated hundreds of millions of people, prevented the economy from going into freefall, kept small businesses from going under, and got people back to work safely. Because of President Biden and Democrats, we CAN safely return to life feeling much more normal – and they should claim that proudly.

Recognize that people are “worn out” and feeling real harm from the years-long restrictions and take their side. Most Americans have personally moved out of crisis mode. Twice as many voters are now more concerned about COVID’s effect on the economy (49%) than about someone in their family or someone they know becoming infected with the coronavirus (24%). Two-thirds of parents and 80% of teachers say the pandemic caused learning loss, and voters are overwhelmingly more worried about learning loss than kids getting COVID. Six in ten Americans describe themselves as “worn out” by the pandemic. The more we talk about the threat of COVID and onerously restrict people’s lives because of it, the more we turn them against us and show them we’re out of touch with their daily realities.”

Alan I. Abramowitz examines redistricting and competition in congressional elections at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and argues that “The ability of House incumbents to attract votes across party lines and thereby insulate themselves from competition is now much more limited than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.” Abramowitz, author of “The Great Alignment: Race, Party Transformation, and the Rise of Donald Trump,” argues further:

The declining personal advantage of incumbency has had a dramatic impact on competition in House elections, especially in districts in which the division of the presidential vote is close to the national average….partisan turnover has fallen slightly in the least competitive districts and remained fairly stable in moderately competitive districts. However, partisan turnover has increased sharply in the most competitive districts — those where the division of the presidential vote is closest to the national average. During the 1980s, the rate of turnover in these districts averaged only 5%. During the most recent decade, however, the rate of turnover in these districts averaged close to 18%.

As Abramowitz concludes,

Based on presidential voting patterns, a much larger proportion of U.S. House districts strongly favor one party, and a much smaller proportion are closely divided than 50 years ago. However, gerrymandering is not the major reason for this trend. Partisan polarization has increased dramatically in U.S. states and counties, whose boundaries have not changed. Moreover, despite the growing partisan divide evident in presidential voting, the competitiveness of House elections has changed very little over the past 5 decades because the personal advantage of incumbency has declined sharply during this period.

The declining ability of incumbents to attract support across party lines means that incumbents in marginal districts — those in which the presidential vote is close to the national average — are now much more vulnerable than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. Incumbents in moderately competitive districts remain somewhat vulnerable as well. Whether that vulnerability turns into actual party turnover depends mainly on the strength of national tides. Large-scale party turnover of House seats tends to occur when there is a strong tide favoring one party. Even if redistricting results in a decline in the number of closely divided districts based on presidential voting, a strong national tide favoring Republicans in 2022 could still result in a large number of seats flipping from Democratic to Republican control. The number of seats switching parties in 2022 and succeeding elections will depend more on the strength of national tides than the number of marginal districts.

While gerrymandering is still a force in state politics across the U.S. and Democrats have to keep at it as long as Republicans do it, Democrats would be wise not to expect too much gain or loss because of redistricting, and to allocate resources according to political attitude trends in each district.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

It’s starting to dawn on more and more Democrats that the crazy in some parts of the party really is having a dire effect on the party’s brand. It’s not just a nuisance, it’s an honest to god problem that can’t be batted away by referring to Fox News talking points and January 6th.

This week of course three ultrawoke members were recalled from the San Francisco school board by absolutely crushing margins. When something like his happens In a place like San Francisco, you know a backlash is afoot.

Tyler Cowen in his Bloomberg column asserts that this result makes it a reasonable time to say wokeism has now peaked and will be receding. Maybe. But Cowen rightfully points out that receding doesn’t mean they will disappear anytime soon since they have burrowed into academia, cultural institutions HR departments, foundations, nonprofits and the like. They’ve got jobs and power and that doesn’t disappear so easily.

“The turning point for the fortunes of the woke may be this week’s school board election in San Francisco, where three members were recalled by a margin of more than 70%. Voters were upset that the school board spent time trying to rename some schools in a more politically correct manner, rather than focusing on reopening all the schools. There was also considerable opposition to the board’s introduction of a lottery admissions system for a prestigious high school, in lieu of the previous use of grades and exam scores….

Another trend is how relatively few immigrants are woke. Latinos in particular seem more open to the Republican Party, or at least don’t seem to have strong partisan attachments. More generally, immigrant political views are more diverse than many people think, even within the Democratic Party….

Wokeism is likely to evolve into a subculture that is highly educated, highly White and fairly feminine. That is still a large mass of people, but not enough to run the country or all its major institutions. In the San Francisco school board recall, for instance, the role of Asian Americans was especially prominent….

The woke also are likely to achieve an even greater hold over American universities. Due to the tenure system, personnel turnover is low, and currently newer and younger faculty are more left-wing than are older faculty, including in my field of economics. The simple march of retirements is going to make universities even more left-wing — and even more out of touch with mainstream America.”

Also this week the DCCC released a memo and data showing just how potent GOP attacks, building on the crazy, are likely to be this cycle.

“In swing districts, 64% of voters agreed with the statement that “Democrats in Congress support defunding the police and taking more cops off of the street.” The internal poll found that 80% of self-defined swing voters in competitive districts agreed with the same statement. Politico previously reported on the DCCC warning about the effectiveness of what they refer to as conservative “culture war attacks.”

Sixty-two percent of voters in contested districts agreed with the statement, “Democrats in Congress have created a border crisis that allows illegal immigrants to enter the country without repercussions and grants them tax-payer funded benefits once here.” Seventy-eight percent of swing voters in those districts agreed.

Sixty-one percent of swing district voters agreed with the statements, “Democrats in Congress are spending money out of control,” and, “Democrats are teaching kids as young as five Critical Race Theory, which teaches that America is a racist country and that white people are racist.” And 59% agreed with the statement, “Democrats are too focused on pursuing an agenda that divides us and judging those who don’t see things their way.”

Remember Democrats, only *you* can stop the crazy. If not you, who? If not now, when? Time to say enough is enough.”

At FiveThirtyEight, Geoffrey Skelley writes:

In the 2020 election, the rightward shift among Latino voters raised eyebrows. Post-election surveys have disagreed about the exact split in the Latino vote, but it appears around 3 in 5 (or slightly more) voted for President Biden over then-President Donald Trump. Yet many of those same surveys as well as precinct-level analysis of the 2020 vote suggest that, compared with his performance in 2016, Trump made gains among Latinos — and in some places, quite sizable ones. Going forward, such swings among Latinos — the largest ethnic or racial minority group in the country— could affect each party’s chance of carrying important states like Arizona, Florida and Texas while also putting Democratic-leaning turf in play for the GOP.

Yet for all the talk about Republicans making serious inroads with Latino voters, new data from Gallup suggests that Latinos’ lurch toward the GOP could be overstated, at least when it comes to how they identify with the two major parties. In Gallup’s survey data for 2021, the pollster found that 56 percent of Hispanic Americans identified as Democrats or as independents who leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 26 percent identified as Republican or as leaning toward the GOP. Those figures represent very little change from what Gallup found in 2020 and, as the chart below shows, largely fall in line with Hispanic party-identification data over the past decade.

Skelley explains further,

And among Latinos, ties to the two parties may be particularly weak because they aren’t as likely as other Americans to form a strong partisan identity at a young age. For starters, about one-third of Latinos weren’t born in the U.S., which means many haven’t developed a strong allegiance to either party. As a result, many first-generation Latinos haven’t instilled loyalty to either party in their children, which is often how younger voters in the U.S. form their partisan identities.¹ It’s no surprise then that younger Latinos, in particular, hold only weak affinities for the two major parties or identify as independent, as they often have to find their own way politically….These looser partisan attachments mean that a sizable bloc of the Latino electorate is persuadable.

Skelley notes that there is evidence that some of the Latino drift toward Trump can be attributed to younger Latino voters, but “Biden’s approval rating has fallen especially hard among Latinos, and like other Americans, Latinos are particularly worried about issues like the economy, COVID-19 and crime, which could benefit Republicans, especially if immigration, an issue that has benefited Democrats among Latinos, remains mostly sidelined.”

Skelley concludes,

“Still, at this point it seems more likely than not that Latino voters will continue to prefer Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. However, given the 2020 election results, the prominent issues that voters are worried about and Biden’s standing with the public, there’s plenty of reason to think that Republicans can further trim Democrats’ lead among Latino voters in 2022 — even if Democrats retain a sizable party-ID advantage among all Latinos.”

In close elections, that could be decisive.

In his New York Times column, “There’s a Reason Trump Loves the Truckers,” Thomas B. Edsall shares some revealing research on how ‘social capital’ influces political choices, and notes Trump’s predictable response:

“We want those great Canadian truckers to know that we are with them all the way,” Trump told rally-goers in Conroe, Texas on Jan. 29….I see they have Trump signs all over the place and I’m proud that they do,” he added.

Edsall notes that in “The Rise of Populism and the Revenge of the Places,” [Andres] Rodríguez-Pose argued:

Populism is not the result of persistent poverty. Places that have been chronically poor are not the ones rebelling.” Instead, he continued, “the rise of populism is a tale of how the long-term decline of formerly prosperous places, disadvantaged by processes that have rendered them exposed and almost expendable, has triggered frustration and anger. In turn, voters in these so-called ‘places that don’t matter’ have sought their revenge at the ballot box….Social capital in the U.S. has been declining for a long time. Associationism and the feeling of community are no longer what they used to be and this has been documented many times. What my co-authors and I are saying is that in those places (counties) where social capital has declined less, long-term demographic and employment decline triggered a switch to Donald Trump. These communities have said “enough is enough” of a system that they feel bypasses them and voted for an anti-system candidate, who is willing to shake the foundations of the system.

Put another way, and regardless of Trump’s future prospects, right-wing populism’s primary constituency is the more recently dispossessed. As Edsall explains, “Translated to the present, in economic and culturally besieged communities, the remnants of social capital have been crucial to the mobilization of men and women — mostly men — who chanted “You will not replace us” and “blood and soil” in Charlottesville, who shot bear spray at police officers on Jan. 6 and who brought Ottawa to its knees for more than two weeks.”

Citing other research, Edsall writes that “cultural conflict and regional economic discrepancies also generate powerful political momentum for those seeking to build a “coalition of resentment.” Since the 2016 election of Trump, the Republican Party has focused on that just that kind of Election Day alliance.” Further,

Shannon M. Monnat and David L. Brown, sociologists at Syracuse and Cornell, have analyzed the economic and demographic characteristics of counties that sharply increased their vote for Trump in 2016 compared with their support for Mitt Romney in 2012.

In their October 2017 paper “More than a rural revolt: Landscapes of despair and the 2016 Presidential election,” Monnat and Brown found that “Trump performed better in counties with more economic distress, worse health, higher drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rates, lower educational attainment, and higher marital separation/divorce rates.”

Trump’s populist message, Monnat and Brown write in their conclusion,

may have been attractive to many long-term Democratic voters in these places who felt abandoned by a Democratic Party that has failed to articulate a strong pro-working class message, whose agendas often emphasize policies and programs to help the poor at what seems like the expense of the working-class, and who evidently believed it did not have to work very hard to earn votes from behind the “big blue wall.”

Edsall notes that “Regardless of the sources of discontent and regardless of the characteristic of those leading the assault on the liberal democratic state, there is no question that the trucker’s insurgency in Canada is catching fire abroad — currently in France, Britain, Belgium, New Zealand and Australia.”

Also, as Edsall observes, “Non-college whites in the United States, like the protesting truckers in Canada, continue to face grim prospects, subordinated by meritocratic competition that rewards what they lack: advanced education and top scores on aptitude tests — accomplishments that feed the resource allocation, the status contests and the employment hierarchies that dominate contemporary life and leave those who cannot prevail out in the cold.”

No one should be surprised if the protests spring up inside the U.S. leading up to the midterm elections. As Edsall concludes, “As long as these voters remain on a downward trajectory, they will continue to be a disruptive force, not only in the political arena but in society at large.”