Great newsletter and congratulations on the new podcast!
I usually don't comment on newsletters but I feel compelled to do so here because I believe that Teixeira's analysis is, to put it bluntly, wrong. I won't pretend that Biden is invulnerable--far from it--but I do think it's worth noting that most of the data we have shows th…
Great newsletter and congratulations on the new podcast!
I usually don't comment on newsletters but I feel compelled to do so here because I believe that Teixeira's analysis is, to put it bluntly, wrong. I won't pretend that Biden is invulnerable--far from it--but I do think it's worth noting that most of the data we have shows that Biden is very well positioned to beat Trump again and starts off as a clear, close-to-heavy favorite against the twice-impeached former president. I'd like to address his argument specifically as it pertains to Biden's approval ratings:
Biden is an extraordinarily *strong* candidate.
Most of Teixeira's analysis focuses on Biden's approval ratings, a point a lot of other pundits have touched on when trying to paint Biden as a vulnerable incumbent. There is both a qualitative and quantitative case against this. First, in my opinion, approval ratings are no longer as indicative of candidate strength as they used to be (Trump had historically low approval ratings and nearly won reelection; Biden had awful approval ratings and still saw his party have one of the best midterm performances in modern history). It is my belief that the 2016 election and the unexpected chaos it unleashed into the body politic fundamentally changed the rules of the game, and the Trump years left Americans of every race, religion, and creed less trustful of their government and more dissatisfied with their political leaders. To me, Biden's low approval ratings are more indicative of a general dissatisfaction with our political moment (with Biden--the elected head of our government--being a focal point for voter dissatisfaction) than they are of a general dislike of the president. Are voter thrilled with him? Certainly not, but that's different from hating the guy and not being willing to vote for him. More importantly, Biden's current approval ratings exist in a vacuum at the moment. When voters are asked "do you approve of President Biden," it's easy to answer that as an up or down referendum on his leadership. In the spring of 2024, however, when that same question is asked, voters are more likely to see it not as a question of Biden's personal performance, but instead as a measure of their approval *relative to the alternative.* In other words, I expect him to get a bit of bump when Trump officially wins the nomination.
Put aside my own personal opinions though and look at the data we have from the past few cycles. Biden's approval ratings have been hovering around the low-to-mid 40s for most of his presidency. With approval ratings like that, you'd expect the president's party to suffer a midterm wipeout along the lines of 2010--Biden and the Democrats did not. Instead, they held Republicans to a draw in Congress (losing seven seats in the House but netting a seat in the Senate) and arguably won the midterms at the state level (dems only lost one incumbent governor in Nevada; flipped three gubernatorial seats in AZ, MD, and MA; and they established *four* new state-based trifectas in MI, MD, MA, and MN).
How did dems do this? By winning independent voters who historically vote against the president's party by double digits. Democrats narrowly beat out Republicans among voters who identified as independents by two points, the first time the president's party has won independent voters in a midterm in quite some time, according to an exit poll from CNN. Perhaps even more surprisingly, Democrats *won* voters who somewhat disapproved of Biden by four points, according to another exit poll from NBC. To put in perspective how amazing those numbers are, consider that independent voters broke for Democrats by 18 and 12 points in 2006 and 2018 (respectively), while breaking for Republicans by 19 and 12 points in 2010 and 2014 (respectively), for a cumulative average of 15.25 points in favor of the opposition party since 2006. Sure, we can chalk *some* of that up to the Dobbs decision, but even with that, Dems shouldn't have defied political gravity by over 17 points.
But, one may say, all this proves is that while individual Democrats may be popular, we can't say the same about the president himself. Fair enough, but I don't think this opinion is supported by the data. If we roughly approximate an individual's view of a "generic Democrat" by looking at the approval of the Democratic Party, we find that a generic dem would actually be *less* popular than president Biden (Biden has a net positive approval of 0.3, while the Democratic Party has a net negative approval rating of -0.2, according to YouGov's weekly tracking poll). What this seems to suggest is that voters aren't seeing a lot of distance between Biden and rank-and-file Dems, or--put another way--there's no reason to assume Biden will perform worse than Democratic senatorial, gubernatorial, or congressional candidates. How do we know this? Because voters really aren't voting *for* Democrats so much as they're voting *against* Republicans. Biden's approval may not be fantastic, and I would take Roy's arguments more seriously in a pre-January 6th world, but it's truly hard to imagine that the reasons why voters rejected Republicans in November--abortion, election denial, J6, Trump--won't still be around in two years. You also simply cannot mention Biden's low approval ratings without stating that--as bad as his are--Trump's are even worse, with the former president's approval falling as low as 25% in a ABC News/IPSOS poll.
Yes, Trump could win in 2024, but let's not let the trauma of the 2016 election keep us from seeing the clear reality of this current political moment: Joe Biden is favored to win reelection, and will likely exceed his 2020 margin by half a point or more.
Charlie,
Great newsletter and congratulations on the new podcast!
I usually don't comment on newsletters but I feel compelled to do so here because I believe that Teixeira's analysis is, to put it bluntly, wrong. I won't pretend that Biden is invulnerable--far from it--but I do think it's worth noting that most of the data we have shows that Biden is very well positioned to beat Trump again and starts off as a clear, close-to-heavy favorite against the twice-impeached former president. I'd like to address his argument specifically as it pertains to Biden's approval ratings:
Biden is an extraordinarily *strong* candidate.
Most of Teixeira's analysis focuses on Biden's approval ratings, a point a lot of other pundits have touched on when trying to paint Biden as a vulnerable incumbent. There is both a qualitative and quantitative case against this. First, in my opinion, approval ratings are no longer as indicative of candidate strength as they used to be (Trump had historically low approval ratings and nearly won reelection; Biden had awful approval ratings and still saw his party have one of the best midterm performances in modern history). It is my belief that the 2016 election and the unexpected chaos it unleashed into the body politic fundamentally changed the rules of the game, and the Trump years left Americans of every race, religion, and creed less trustful of their government and more dissatisfied with their political leaders. To me, Biden's low approval ratings are more indicative of a general dissatisfaction with our political moment (with Biden--the elected head of our government--being a focal point for voter dissatisfaction) than they are of a general dislike of the president. Are voter thrilled with him? Certainly not, but that's different from hating the guy and not being willing to vote for him. More importantly, Biden's current approval ratings exist in a vacuum at the moment. When voters are asked "do you approve of President Biden," it's easy to answer that as an up or down referendum on his leadership. In the spring of 2024, however, when that same question is asked, voters are more likely to see it not as a question of Biden's personal performance, but instead as a measure of their approval *relative to the alternative.* In other words, I expect him to get a bit of bump when Trump officially wins the nomination.
Put aside my own personal opinions though and look at the data we have from the past few cycles. Biden's approval ratings have been hovering around the low-to-mid 40s for most of his presidency. With approval ratings like that, you'd expect the president's party to suffer a midterm wipeout along the lines of 2010--Biden and the Democrats did not. Instead, they held Republicans to a draw in Congress (losing seven seats in the House but netting a seat in the Senate) and arguably won the midterms at the state level (dems only lost one incumbent governor in Nevada; flipped three gubernatorial seats in AZ, MD, and MA; and they established *four* new state-based trifectas in MI, MD, MA, and MN).
How did dems do this? By winning independent voters who historically vote against the president's party by double digits. Democrats narrowly beat out Republicans among voters who identified as independents by two points, the first time the president's party has won independent voters in a midterm in quite some time, according to an exit poll from CNN. Perhaps even more surprisingly, Democrats *won* voters who somewhat disapproved of Biden by four points, according to another exit poll from NBC. To put in perspective how amazing those numbers are, consider that independent voters broke for Democrats by 18 and 12 points in 2006 and 2018 (respectively), while breaking for Republicans by 19 and 12 points in 2010 and 2014 (respectively), for a cumulative average of 15.25 points in favor of the opposition party since 2006. Sure, we can chalk *some* of that up to the Dobbs decision, but even with that, Dems shouldn't have defied political gravity by over 17 points.
But, one may say, all this proves is that while individual Democrats may be popular, we can't say the same about the president himself. Fair enough, but I don't think this opinion is supported by the data. If we roughly approximate an individual's view of a "generic Democrat" by looking at the approval of the Democratic Party, we find that a generic dem would actually be *less* popular than president Biden (Biden has a net positive approval of 0.3, while the Democratic Party has a net negative approval rating of -0.2, according to YouGov's weekly tracking poll). What this seems to suggest is that voters aren't seeing a lot of distance between Biden and rank-and-file Dems, or--put another way--there's no reason to assume Biden will perform worse than Democratic senatorial, gubernatorial, or congressional candidates. How do we know this? Because voters really aren't voting *for* Democrats so much as they're voting *against* Republicans. Biden's approval may not be fantastic, and I would take Roy's arguments more seriously in a pre-January 6th world, but it's truly hard to imagine that the reasons why voters rejected Republicans in November--abortion, election denial, J6, Trump--won't still be around in two years. You also simply cannot mention Biden's low approval ratings without stating that--as bad as his are--Trump's are even worse, with the former president's approval falling as low as 25% in a ABC News/IPSOS poll.
Yes, Trump could win in 2024, but let's not let the trauma of the 2016 election keep us from seeing the clear reality of this current political moment: Joe Biden is favored to win reelection, and will likely exceed his 2020 margin by half a point or more.