Biden approval ratings thread, 1.0

[prag_prog]

If Biden can maintain a positive net approval in double digits even at the end of fall, then I'd say Dems would be in an ok position for midterms (doesn't mean they r gonna win House but might not be a blowout). Lot of recent first term presidents did lose lot of their popularity in later half of their first year

[Beet]

Obama's honeymoon lasted through May and then I remember by mid-summer you started seeing these really scary Tea Party crowds crashing town halls and just going nuts. If Biden's actually doing well or if it's a honeymoon we won't really know until the fall though.

[Person Man]

Obama's honeymoon lasted through May and then I remember by mid-summer you started seeing these really scary Tea Party crowds crashing town halls and just going nuts. If Biden's actually doing well or if it's a honeymoon we won't really know until the fall though.

The TEA Party riots were really fun. That’s what Obama and Pelosi get by taking the summer off and trying to work with Republicans.

[pbrower2a]

There are lessons to be learned about 2010.

1. Do not assume t he repetition of history based on analogues. 2010 looked as if it would be a replay of 1934 to a President who modeled himself much like FDR. It was not a perfect analogue. In 1934 the "economic royalists" were still concerned with the survival of their businesses and weren't going to waste money on political campaigns. In 2010 investment in political campaigns could pay off richly as the elites could find willing stooges to do the political dirty work.

2. It will have been only twelve years since 2010, so expect people who know what they are doing to do what succeeded the last time, perhaps refining the process. The rapacious elites of 2010 still want Americans to endure Scandinavian costs of living on African wages, and if they can get that they will have maximized profit.

3. Mitch McConnell has already telescoped much of the agenda: a national right-to-work law that would eviscerate labor unions so that workers would be helpless against rapacious, all-powerful economic elites, gutting of whatever environmental regulations that there are (they might remain, but only to stifle competition), and more support of privatization of the public sector. It's mirror-image Marxism that creates a Hell for workers -- but the economic elites are much lauded for building castles and palaces while the common people get cold and hungry.

4. America has a heritage of greedy plutocrats who treat workers as badly as possible. It was called slavery. It infested 'only' the agrarian South, but as has been shown elsewhere (most infamously Nazi Germany) industrial workers can also be transformed into serfs unable to contest the power of plutocrats, Do not be fooled: all that prevents something horrible (and it need not have militarism or racial-religious genocide attached). Nazi Germany might be too far along as an ideology, except that the US could become a militaristic police state. Think of Pinochet's Chile, in which dissidents were murdered after torture.

Empathy is not part of the requisite of character of America's plutocrats and executives. Our economic elites are an exclusive club who want no competition even from small business, let alone labor unions in challenging pay and conditions or any consequences of a political arena.

What those elites do not want is apocalyptic war which replaces a ruthless American elite with a similarly-rapacious Russian or Chinese elite. It surprises me that German tycoons and executives did not face the same consequences for exploitation of prisoners in the camps (aside from expropriation in central and Balkan Europe, and damage from air rai8ds and consequences of land war) as the administrators and guards in such camps.

5. Donald Trump still has a cult that sees nothing wrong with despotic government that agrees with them on cultural issues and cannot accept political defeat. Should Trump become irrelevant, then someone else will offer much the same agenda with a different set of personal quirks. Maybe he will be more cautious about using vile language. Maybe that pol will offer more overt religious devotion and a less sordid personal life with no sleazy business dealings. That Trump got away with irreligion, a pattern of sexual perversion that mocks the more conservative values of most Americans, and a pattern of fraud in taxes and business dealings should warn us of the hazard of someone 'cleaner'.  The danger of Donald Trump is not in his raw language, his acceptance of a more conventional form of religious devotion ("The Bible says it; I believe it; believe it or burn!) of the fundamentalist Protestant type, who may have been sexually loyal to one spouse from early adulthood, his one-sided business dealings that cheat investors and leave subcontractors in worse shape than before they had dealings with him; it is that he really believes that the common man exists solely to make those already filthy-rich even more filthy rich while living on the edge of hunger, exposure, and homelessness. Trump has his dream of a social order in which the poor (and that includes people heavily in debt with no easy way of getting out from under it) owe everything to those who owe the common man nothing. The GOP has plenty of imaginable candidates who have Trump's economic ideology without the personal abominations.

The political struggle for the dignity of Humanity is far from decided in America. A political equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition based upon economic orthodoxy could be just as brutal as the original in which one could burn at the stake for having a family get-together that has some resemblance to a Seder has not become impossible. The worst deeds that people have ever done have been in the pretense of righteousness; even the Nazis thought they were doing a great service to Humanity through the Holocaust. America's economic elites are consummately ruthless... and convinced of their rectitude. Give them the power that they think that they deserve, and America will be a nightmare in which the kindest thing that one could do for a newborn child (if one is poor) is to offer that child for a foreign adoption. 

[pbrower2a]

Massachusetts: UMass-Amherst, March 5-9, 800 adults

Approve 62
Disapprove 34

Other approvals:

Gov. Charlie Baker: 52/39
Sen. Edward Markey: 53/30
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: 55/34
MA state legislature: 51/31
U.S. Congress: 33/57

Quinnipiac, New York

March 16-17
905 registered voters
MoE: 3.3%

Cuomo approval: 39% approve, 48% disapprove (-9)
Cuomo favorability: 33% favorable, 51% unfavorable (-28)
Should Cuomo run for reelection?: 25% Yes, 66% No
Should Cuomo resign?: 43% Yes, 49% No
Should Cuomo be impeached?: 36% Yes, 54% No

Biden approval: 59/35 (+24)
Schumer approval: 50/40 (+10)
Gillibrand approval: 44/33 (+11)

https://poll.qu.edu/images/polling/ny/ny03182021_nktj17.pdf

Clearly a Republican leaning sample, so take this poll with a grain of salt.

Well, it is our first approvaal poll of New York State.  


Oregon, DHM Research. March 7-14.

I am going to take "positive" as a surrogate for "approve" and "negative" as a surrogate for "disapprove". We have few polls of Oregon even in electoral heats, so we beggars can't be choosers.

President Joe Biden:

Strong positive 28%
Somewhat positive 25%
Somewhat negative 12%
Strong negative 28%

Don't know 7%

Biden does about as well with white people as with "people of color"; he is strong in the Portland metropolitan area and to a slightly lesser extent in the Willamette Valley; outside of that (the thinly-populated coast and the areas east of the Cascades) not so well.   He does better among college-educated people than among others, sort-of-OK among voters over 65 or under 30, but well among the rest.

The Democratic Governor's approvals are not so great. 38% positive, 56% negative, so she (Kate Brown) has her work cut out for her for getting re-elected.

https://www.dhmresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/DHM-Panel_data-release-1-March-2021.pdf

 

Key:

30% red shade: Biden up 1-5%
40% red shade: Biden up 5-10%
50% red shade: Biden up 10-15%
60% red shade: Biden up 15-20%
70% red shade: Biden up 20-25%
80% red shade: Biden up 25-30%
90% red shade: Biden up 30%+

50% green shade: tie

30% blue shade: Biden down 1-5%
40% blue shade: Biden down 5-10%
50% blue shade: Biden down 10-15%
60% blue shade: Biden down 15-20%
70% blue shade: Biden down 20-25%
80% blue shade: Biden down 25-30%
90% blue shade: Biden down 30%+


It is approval ratings, and not favorability ratings. Favorability ratings are relevant when they are blatant  (as in states that are not close and usually do not get polled, like New York Rhode Island or Oklahoma) because the states rarely decide an election, but they always must defer to approval. Would I use a favorability rating for Illinois? Sure. Wisconsin? Absolutely not.

*an asterisk indicates that I have accepted a favorability rating.  New York State only.

[President Johnson]

I love it how Georgia is dark (Atlas) red on this map.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

D's are gonna keep both Houses of Congress

[pbrower2a]

D's are gonna keep both Houses of Congress

My assessment (from a different thread):

Years in which a new Party takes over the Presidency usually bring in a significant number of Senators and Representatives with the new President. Democrats won only two Senate seats that they expected to win, one against a very right-wing Senator in a state drifting strongly D and another defeating an incumbent who really had no business being in the Senate. Appointed pols who have little-to-no experience winning electoral campaigns usually lose. Two others were Democrats who survived jungle primaries for a Senate seat and won their seats (in Georgia) in part due to the misconduct of the defeated President.

Oddly, Democrats lost more House seats than they gained while Joe Biden won the Presidency. Ordinarily a win for a President's Party brings into the House some marginal pols vulnerable in the next election. This time the vulnerable new pols in the House are members of the Party that lost the Presidency. Maybe Republicans can continue to gerrymander House seats in the usual stack-and-pack method as they did in 2011...but maybe they can't. New members of the House are more vulnerable than older ones as a rule because the more established ones have usually had districts designed to make re-election easy and because they are able to get goodies for their constituents such as money for some spur expressway or the expansion of a military base -- and because they have successfully honed their political skills.

Any Republican pols who run on such issues as "Trump really won" will be easier to defeat than those who prove quick studies on the area in which they are members of Congressional committees. To be sure, we will still be only twelve years away from the Tea Party election of 2010 and a similar election in 2014... but demographics now more strongly put weak Republicans at risk of defeat.    

[pbrower2a]

For what it is worth:

March 1-7
588 registered voters

Favorabilities

Joe Biden: 52/45 (+7)
John Fetterman: 29/20 (+9)
Malcolm Kenyatta: 10/6 (+4)
Mitch McConnell: 18/64 (-46)
Donald Trump: 43/54 (-11)

Do you think of yourself as a Trump Republican, a traditional Republican, or something else?
267 Republicans

Trump Republican 42%
Traditional Republican 38%
Something else 17%
Do not know 4%

Do you think of yourself as a progressive Democrat, a centrist Democrat, or something else?
243 Democrats

Centrist Democrat 45%
Progressive Democrat 33%
Something else 15%
Do not know 7%

https://www.fandm.edu/uploads/files/200017560246277019-fmmarch2021-topline.pdf

This looks like a better position for Democrats five months after the Presidential election than at the time in which Pennsylvania had a nail-biter contest. It is favorability, and not approval, in a swing state. It would be on the map if it were "approval". 

[wbrocks67]

For what it is worth:

March 1-7
588 registered voters

Favorabilities

Joe Biden: 52/45 (+7)
John Fetterman: 29/20 (+9)
Malcolm Kenyatta: 10/6 (+4)
Mitch McConnell: 18/64 (-46)
Donald Trump: 43/54 (-11)

Do you think of yourself as a Trump Republican, a traditional Republican, or something else?
267 Republicans

Trump Republican 42%
Traditional Republican 38%
Something else 17%
Do not know 4%

Do you think of yourself as a progressive Democrat, a centrist Democrat, or something else?
243 Democrats

Centrist Democrat 45%
Progressive Democrat 33%
Something else 15%
Do not know 7%

https://www.fandm.edu/uploads/files/200017560246277019-fmmarch2021-topline.pdf

This looks like a better position for Democrats five months after the Presidential election than at the time in which Pennsylvania had a nail-biter contest. It is favorability, and not approval, in a swing state. It would be on the map if it were "approval". 

And this looks like a bit of an R-leaning sample too.

[VAR]

NC - Meredith College
March 12-15
699 registered voters

Approve 56%
Disapprove 40%

https://www.meredith.edu/assets/images/content/Meredith_Poll_Report_Spring_2021_final.pdf

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Good news for Jackson in NC

[pbrower2a]

The times are changing. This poll is hard to believe, but I have seen other polls of North Carolina that suggest the same thing. This suggests that North Carolina has gone from being a lean-R state (as shown in the 2020 election) to decidedly D.

NC - Meredith College
March 12-15
699 registered voters

Approve 56%
Disapprove 40%

https://www.meredith.edu/assets/images/content/Meredith_Poll_Report_Spring_2021_final.pdf

Demographic change? That happens slowly. One thing did change, and this is the first poll of any kind that has addressed one of my questions about the post-Trump political scene:

Political Violence

With the racial equality protests and the riots on January 6 at the Capitol, the issue of political
violence has become prominent in American politics. Security experts suggest that we will see more
political violence in coming years, as a result of the hyper-polarization in the country. North
Carolinians strongly support non-violent protests guaranteed in the Constitution, but strongly
oppose more violent types of expression. Political acts such as holding a sign in front of a
government building (67.8% support) and participating in a peaceful march (84.2% support).
Every demographic group, including political partisans, strongly support those types of
expressions.

On more extreme political acts—taking over a government building, using violence or assassination
against political opponents, or bombing—well over 80 percent of North Carolinians oppose those
type of acts. Only the youngest respondents—and only about 20% of them—supported the idea of
using more violent means of political statements.

“Although we should be concerned about any type of political violence,” McLennan stated, “the
public roundly opposes this type of behavior. However, the fact that over 11% of North Carolinians think that taking over a government building or just under 10% feel that it is acceptable to commit violence against a political opponent or assassinate a political leader that is acting inappropriately should be of great concern to use all.”

Violence at polling places, although rare, is concerning to respondents to our survey. Over 40% of
respondents indicated that their willingness to vote would be decreased if they saw political
observers carrying firearms outside the polling place. Also, if there was violence between
representatives of the two major parties outside the polling place, almost two-thirds of respondents
indicated that they would be less likely to cast their ballots. On the issue of potential violence at
polling places, such as seeing political observers carrying firearms, over half of the Democrats
(52.9%) indicated they would be less likely to vote, but only 28.7 percent of Republicans felt that it
would affect their voting behavior.

In terms of the causes of increased political violence over the last year, a plurality of North
Carolinians (38%) say that extremists on the political left and right are equally to blame. There is,
however, a large partisan gap among the respondents with a large percentage of Democrats
(46.5%) blaming right-wing extremism and Republicans (36.8%) blaming political violence
primarily on left-wing extremism.

“There is little evidence that most North Carolinians condone political violence,” McLennan states,
“but there is evidence that partisans in the state see the causes of violence quite differently.
Whether it is Republicans blaming Antifa for violence or Democrats blaming the Proud Boys and
similar groups for the increased violence, the consequences of these attitudes could be significant.
Law enforcement should treat all violence as equally important, but political leaders may reflect the
same attitudes as many of our respondents and cause some who cause political violence to be
under-investigated or punished.”

North Carolina may not be a viable microcosm of America, but in essence

1. Peaceful protest is acceptable irrespective of the political orientation
2. Political violence, including the violent disruption of political process, is unacceptable
3. Although such people are clearly in the minority, about one tenth of Americans approve of political violence to get their way.

My guess is that the third group consists largely of extremists on the Left and Right. Obviously that is far larger than some current protest movements with a left-leaning orientation (Black Lives Matter) and, frankly, much of the Right (including the "gun rights" movement).

I can say this: if the state were Massachusetts or Wyoming and something has disdain among 80% of the public such would suggest that it is unpopular nationwide. America may be polarized -- but not that much. Violence is as American as cherry pie -- but so are tornadoes and rattlesnakes. At least I can take shelter from a tornado and can back off from a rattlesnake.

If Democrats can connect incumbent or challenger Republicans to support of the January 6 insurrection, then they have a powerful tool.        


 

Key:

30% red shade: Biden up 1-5%
40% red shade: Biden up 5-10%
50% red shade: Biden up 10-15%
60% red shade: Biden up 15-20%
70% red shade: Biden up 20-25%
80% red shade: Biden up 25-30%
90% red shade: Biden up 30%+

50% green shade: tie

30% blue shade: Biden down 1-5%
40% blue shade: Biden down 5-10%
50% blue shade: Biden down 10-15%
60% blue shade: Biden down 15-20%
70% blue shade: Biden down 20-25%
80% blue shade: Biden down 25-30%
90% blue shade: Biden down 30%+


It is approval ratings, and not favorability ratings. Favorability ratings are relevant when they are blatant  (as in states that are not close and usually do not get polled, like New York Rhode Island or Oklahoma) because the states rarely decide an election, but they always must defer to approval. Would I use a favorability rating for Illinois? Sure. Wisconsin? Absolutely not.

[wbrocks67]

56/40 is hard to swallow but it would not be impossible to believe that North Carolina's Trump fever has finally broken a bit.

[pbrower2a]

56/40 is hard to swallow but it would not be impossible to believe that North Carolina's Trump fever has finally broken a bit.

It is hard to believe, and America has not known as sharp a swing in ideology on a national scale since an environment in which Jimmy Carter could win into one in which he had no chance. Carter had some bad luck, to be sure, but one can attribute much of the change from a Carter-friendly environment to a Reagan-friendly environment to cultural change. The Religious Right and pro-gun interests won over a large part of America in all regions, and Carter stayed put. Carter lost -- big.

We may have had a similar moment in time.

North Carolina may not be a microcosm of America, but any momentous change in the political culture of a state not tied to something unique to that state that is near the center of the political spectrum bodes ill for those on the wrong side of political history.

What do I mean by unique to a state? One such example would have been the decline of the coal-mining industry in West Virginia. No state depended more upon coal for jobs and income, and the powerful United Mine Workers Union could get the vote out for Democratic pols. That is obviously over, and West Virginia is no longer the sort of state that votes D in Presidential elections other than R blowouts

[It’s so Joever]

*One good poll from NC exists.*

"Biden is the Democratic Reagan and we will get  nut map in 2022."

[GeorgiaModerate]

ARG economic survey (monthly), March 17-20, 1100 adults including 989 RV

Adults:

Approve 60 (+2)
Disapprove 34 (nc)

RV:

Approve 60 (+1)
Disapprove 34 (nc)

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

We all must remember that Biden won FL, OH, NC, IA in 2008/12 with Obama, we are gonna keep both Houses

[pbrower2a]

*One good poll from NC exists.*

"Biden is the Democratic Reagan and we will get  nut map in 2022."

The big point is that Donald Trump is now so d@mn toxic. Until I saw the above poll showing that Americans abhor political violence I was chary of saying that a fundamental change had happened in American politics. But it has. Sure, it was what I expected... but it was even bigger.

It is impossible to see footage of the storming of the Capitol without seeing all the TRUMP banners. You can trust that Democrats will make the most of this against any Republican who was even wishy-washy about opposing the Putsch.

Republicans would be wise to not go after people who voted to impeach Donald Trump.  Except fr people now political neophytes, those are the future of the GOP as of now. 

Joe Biden may be taking the role of Reagan as it falls into his lap.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

NC - Meredith College
March 12-15
699 registered voters

Approve 56%
Disapprove 40%

https://www.meredith.edu/assets/images/content/Meredith_Poll_Report_Spring_2021_final.pdf

We need Uncle Joe to tweet about his 56% approval rating in NC.

THANK YOU TO THE GREAT STATE OF NC! TRUE HONER.

[President Johnson]

NC - Meredith College
March 12-15
699 registered voters

Approve 56%
Disapprove 40%

https://www.meredith.edu/assets/images/content/Meredith_Poll_Report_Spring_2021_final.pdf

We need Uncle Joe to tweet about his 56% approval rating in NC.

THANK YOU TO THE GREAT STATE OF NC! TRUE HONER.

You forgot WORKING HARD! at the end

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

NC is the tipping pt, it gives D's 52 seats with or without GA, given the House stays D, and possibly more seats

Trump overperformed in OH, FL and NC, given Miami, Mahoning County and CUNNINGHAM scandal, before the Insurrectionists

Mahoning County isn't gonna vote R again and Miami isn't gonna vote only 10 pts for Ds

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

PPP just released show ACTON leading Mandel, go Acton

[pbrower2a]

MO (Remington)

43% approve
53% disapprove

Hey, Tender, I know it's been a while since you've posted this, but do you have a link for that poll? I've been searching on google for Remington polls and recent polls of Missouri and I'm not having much luck finding it.

The most recent poll I found on the firm's website dates back to June last year, in fact.

Unless Remington made the poll for a private entity, the absence of a link suggests the worst, such as a fabrication. I generally trust people for valid polls. In view of this disclosure I delete the poll in question from my map. 

Key:

30% red shade: Biden up 1-5%
40% red shade: Biden up 5-10%
50% red shade: Biden up 10-15%
60% red shade: Biden up 15-20%
70% red shade: Biden up 20-25%
80% red shade: Biden up 25-30%
90% red shade: Biden up 30%+

50% green shade: tie

30% blue shade: Biden down 1-5%
40% blue shade: Biden down 5-10%
50% blue shade: Biden down 10-15%
60% blue shade: Biden down 15-20%
70% blue shade: Biden down 20-25%
80% blue shade: Biden down 25-30%
90% blue shade: Biden down 30%+


It is approval ratings, and not favorability ratings. Favorability ratings are relevant when they are blatant  (as in states that are not close and usually do not get polled, like New York Rhode Island or Oklahoma) because the states rarely decide an election, but they always must defer to approval. Would I use a favorability rating for Illinois? Sure. Wisconsin? Absolutely not.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Users are having a hard time coming to grips that D's are leading in an Ohio poll they really think blue collar states like WI, OH or IA are rock solid R