Biden’s Low Approval Rating May Not Matter
Biden’s Low Approval Rating May Not Matter
Data confirms voters aren’t likely to base their decision on approval ratings.
PRESIDENT BIDEN’S JOB APPROVAL RATING has plummeted during his three years in office to historic lows—lower than President Obama’s was at this point before he won re-election in 2012, lower even than President Trump’s was in October 2020 before he lost.
The numbers make clear that Biden is a much weaker candidate than he was when he defeated Trump three years ago. It’s unlikely Biden’s approval will recover significantly before November. But—crucially—that doesn’t mean he will lose the election.
A Marist poll last week showed Biden beating Trump in New Hampshire by 7 points, and by 3 points with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running as a third-party candidate. The president’s approval in the Granite State is a dismal 38 percent.
There are multiple theories for why Biden remains underwater, with higher disapproval than approval. Most of the electorate has concluded that Biden is too old. As some commentators have noted, in his long career, Biden has never been popular; his initial honeymoon in the presidency was a temporary deviation from the norm as the country basked in the relief of dumping Trump.
Biden’s peak approval registered at about 54 percent in the spring of 2021, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls. There was one big reason: Americans, coming out of the pandemic, had hope. The Biden administration was competently managing the vaccine rollout and most of us had had one or both shots and celebrated a return to normal life.
Biden’s polling crashed to earth that fall, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the battle over the bloated and ill-fated Build Back Better bill. By the end of his first year in office, 10 percent more Americans disapproved of his job performance than approved. He lost favor with a majority because he lost the support of his own voters. The centrist Biden inspires no zeal from his base the way Obama did, let alone the way a cult leader like Trump does. He has no buffer.
So the spring of 2021 was a rare time of artificially elevated national mood. It’s hard to imagine a scenario other than a major national emergency in which any president reaches 53 percent approval again. We live in an age of extreme polarization and zero-sum politics, in which entrenched partisans despise a president from the opposing party, and the default dourness Americans naturally revert to (see: current economic data vs. polling about the economy) means the in-power coalition is also likely to be disappointed. Biden polls poorly on nearly all the issues that comprise the umbrella of job approval: inflation/economy, foreign policy, immigration, crime, and his fitness/age. But we can’t know how voters prioritize them (or other issues) when making their choice. And even if Biden manages to stabilize the southern border, help end the war in Gaza, and preside over continuing economic improvements and low inflation, his job approval might not budge.
YET APPROVAL RATINGS MAY NO LONGER BE a useful benchmark in future campaigns, especially if Biden overperforms his polling in 2024 the way Democrats did in 2022 and 2023. An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that Democrats did so by an average of 10 points in special elections throughout 2023, outperforming the partisan lean of the districts—and the polls—even where they lost.
Before the 2022 midterms, both parties predicted doom for Democrats because Biden’s approval was at 40 percent according to Gallup—lower than previous presidents who had faced massive losses in their first midterms. But Democrats outran Biden’s job approval everywhere, defending Senate seats in swing states like Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, winning Pennsylvania’s open seat, and losing just ten House seats in what was predicted to be a wipeout.
A year later, the same thing: In 2023, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear won re-election, and Democrats took back control of the Virginia state legislature (ending Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hope of a presidential run) and scored a major abortion ballot victory in deep-red Ohio.
This year, polling that shows Trump leading Biden in swing states like Georgia is a problem. But Biden’s job-approval number in Georgia is probably not. A new Atlanta Journal-Constitution/University of Georgia poll shows Trump leading Biden by 8 points in the Peach State, but Biden’s job approval is the same there as it is in New Hampshire—38 percent. We don’t know if polls will shift in Georgia later this year or if Biden can win the state, but fretting about his popularity there is clearly a waste of time. Rather than convincing their rank-and-file that Biden should inspire them, Democrats will have to mobilize every part of the Democratic coalition and try to drive up Trump’s negatives with independents—as well as the moderate Republicans who helped Brad Raffensperger win his primary and voted for both Gov. Brian Kemp and Sen. Raphael Warnock. Not many Never Trump Republicans who support Biden would tell a pollster they approve of his job performance, but that isn’t the basis for their votes.
GREAT RECENT ECONOMIC NEWS could help Biden—the stock market has hit new records, inflation is abating, and consumer sentiment has increased more in the last two months than in any other two-month period in the past thirty years. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment index showed optimism increasing 13 percent in January, and more than 29 percent since November. This could affect Biden’s approval ratings—or not. Voters may continue to rate him poorly on the economy even as they approve of economic policies Biden campaigns on—more access and less cost for health insurance, the child tax credit, more taxes for the wealthy and lower costs for prescription drugs. And a vibe shift on the economy means, especially for Democratic voters, that they will be more open to considering other factors when voting, like abortion or democracy or other issues salient come November. Should the war in Gaza end by Election Day, there will probably be more young Americans voting on abortion, despite their anger at Biden now for not supporting a ceasefire.
If enough of the 3.7 million holders of student debt, who have had $137 billion of that debt forgiven, are located in swing states, they could make a big difference. Those same voters could also disapprove of Biden on many other issues, but he wrote off thousands of dollars of their debt. Expect Democrats to remind them of it.
As Biden has lost younger voters, he has solidified his support from seniors, who are far more regular and reliable voters than their grandchildren. The Biden administration will announce new, reduced drug prices—negotiated for the first time ever between Medicare and the pharmaceutical companies—on September 1, two months before the election. While the new prices won’t go into effect until 2026, the large senior populations in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona will know about this, just like they’ll know about the administration’s insulin price cap. It may not change his job approval but could juice turnout significantly.
Many factors will determine the race between Trump and Biden, most critically any third-party candidates who could throw the election to Trump. But there are so many other unknowns, like how swing voters react to the Supreme Court’s decision on whether Trump can remain on the Colorado and Maine ballots, and whether he (and Biden and every future president) is entitled to absolute immunity. The outcomes of those decisions could mobilize significant numbers of voters. We also don’t know how the electorate would respond to Trump on trial—an unhinged defendant playing the victim while trying to provoke sanction from every judge—or to a conviction. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 28 percent of Republicans saying they would not support Trump against Biden if he is convicted, with 43 percent saying they still would and another 28 percent who were not sure. We don’t know if House Republicans will insist on impeaching Biden, or how they will handle their investigation of his son—both of which Trump will be directing from the campaign trail.
We have plenty of things to sweat this year, but Biden’s job approval isn’t one of them. If he wins in November, that data point will become obsolete.