Viruses and the economy sink Biden’s popularity

Por Jonathan Bernstein

President Joe Biden’s approval rating continues to decline. He currently has a 42.8% approval (and 51.3% disapproval) based on the FiveThirtyEight survey average.

One can turn a blind eye and argue that its approval has stabilized (it was at 43.0% on Oct 30), but it is equally likely to continue on a steady downward path. Recall that survey averages are much more reliable than individual surveys, but are still subject to individual survey distortions that are higher or lower than reality for essentially random reasons.

Biden has lost about 10 percentage points of approval since the end of July. That’s about two points every three weeks, a substantial decline, though not unusual by historical standards: Most presidents since the polling era began have had longer, faster, or both drops. Biden’s decline is not yet historically unusual.

But he is about to reach a sad new milestone. For most of his tenure, his approval has surpassed that of Donald Trump and Gerald Ford on the same day as their presidencies. In a few days, he will lag behind Ford, who had a brief promotion at this point. If Biden continues to fall, he could stay behind Ford for a while. And it’s just five percentage points above what Trump was at this point.

Why has the popularity of Biden? It is difficult to give proof of this kind of thing; there are too many possibilities at stake. But it’s certainly suggestive that the COVID case count bottomed out in the first week of July, so Biden’s popularity started to drop just as people started noticing that – once again – things were getting worse. And it continued as economic numbers deteriorated during the third quarter.

It is true that the COVID-19 wave peaked in early September, and that the case count has been declining for about two months (although they have stalled again). It’s also true, as data journalist G. Elliott Morris highlights, that Biden still gets higher marks from voters on his handling of the coronavirus than on most other things.

But that doesn’t mean the virus, and its effects on the economy, aren’t the main cause of Biden’s bad approval. If people have become pessimistic about the country and the economy, they are likely to take it out on the president, period. Even, paradoxically, if they think it is not their fault.

There are other possibilities, but the fit is not as good. Could people be unhappy because Biden turned out to be too liberal as president? Or because it is too partisan? Maybe, but his approval ratings were fine when Democrats passed the bill. “very liberal”Of pandemic aid in February and March without any Republican support, and when he launched the current program in late April.

It is likely that it suffered some damage from the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan during the summer, but it is difficult to see it on the trend line, and similar events in the past have produced temporary – unsustained – drops in popularity, in part. because they disappear quickly from the news. That is exactly what happened with Afghanistan.

If the “plateauCurrent in case counts of COVID-19 It turns out to be a bump on a downward path, and if there isn’t a significant winter wave, and if recent employment news and other economic indicators are evidence of a recovering economy, we’ll know soon.

The only thing I would still doubt would be any conclusion that voters have already made a decision against Biden forever. That is something that the historical record strongly suggests does not happen. Instead, the record for approval ratings says that Biden could win back everything he lost, and more, if perceptions of the economy improve dramatically – or fall further if they don’t.