Biden approval ratings thread, 1.0

[DaleCooper]

The Gallup numbers are pretty rough for Trump. Their polls have detected significant upticks in his approval during his high points, even though he never hit 50, so I think it's probably true that Trump's standing among voters has declined. His personal favorability has always been low so I don't want to say that his popularity has ever changed much, but I do think that voters' willingness to tolerate him has shifted around somewhat over his term. 

[DaleCooper]

Whether you love or hate the data they're showing, always ignore Rasmussen Reports. That's my philosophy anyway.

[DaleCooper]

I expect Biden's approval ratings to be roughly an inverse of Trump's, with him being consistently at least a few points in the positive, barring a couple brief exceptions here and there. We're probably seeing the beginning of that.

[DaleCooper]

Washington State: PPP, May 25-26, 992 LV

Approve 54
Disapprove 41

By region:

King County 70/23
North Puget Sound 54/42
South Sound 40/55
Olympic Peninsula & SW Washington 55/40
East & Central Washington 41/57

Seems like an outlier, imho. Biden should be stronger in this state.

That is a poll that would make sense if Biden were down 10 points nationally. Biden is up 13 nationally. That poll is a big outlier.

Are you saying there's a chance that Washington votes to the right of the National Popular Vote?

[DaleCooper]

I wonder what the root cause for Biden's mixed approval is. If it's related to his agenda being seen as too progressive, he might actually get more popular once he loses congress like Bill Clinton did, though certainly not to the same extent.

[DaleCooper]

I wonder what the root cause for Biden's mixed approval is. If it's related to his agenda being seen as too progressive, he might actually get more popular once he loses congress like Bill Clinton did, though certainly not to the same extent.

This didn’t really happen for Obama.

True, but it happened to Trump to a small extent.

[DaleCooper]

I wonder what the root cause for Biden's mixed approval is. If it's related to his agenda being seen as too progressive, he might actually get more popular once he loses congress like Bill Clinton did, though certainly not to the same extent.

This didn’t really happen for Obama.

True, but it happened to Trump to a small extent.

Trump didn’t get appreciably more popular when he lost the House.

There may not have been a tangible increase in his average approval rating but I think he was helped significantly by being able to take credit for the economy without having to stand by whatever rightwing dreck that a Republican trifecta would otherwise spew forth. I don't know if there's anything to it, but it's a thought. Congress is so consistently unpopular these days that I wonder if being a further degree removed from it spares the President from some of the resentment that people hold towards "the government" as a whole.

[DaleCooper]

I think a bigger longterm threat to Biden's approval ratings will be the confusion surrounding COVID-19. Regardless of how anyone in this thread feels, our government's messaging basically went from "If you get vaccinated, you get your life back to normal" to "If you get vaccinated, you're still at risk and a risk to others and need to keep wearing masks and now need to get vaccinated again every 8 months and even then you probably still aren't safe." That's ultimately going to be much more frustrating to American voters than Afghanistan which is more complicated since even those who disapprove of him wanted us out of the region.

[DaleCooper]

I think a bigger longterm threat to Biden's approval ratings will be the confusion surrounding COVID-19. Regardless of how anyone in this thread feels, our government's messaging basically went from "If you get vaccinated, you get your life back to normal" to "If you get vaccinated, you're still at risk and a risk to others and need to keep wearing masks and now need to get vaccinated again every 8 months and even then you probably still aren't safe." That's ultimately going to be much more frustrating to American voters than Afghanistan which is more complicated since even those who disapprove of him wanted us out of the region.

Not the government's fault. What else are they supposed to? If people don't get vaccinated, plans will have to (and they already have) changed. The anti vaccine and anti maskers are the ones that are ruining everything for everyone, so it's bewildering how Biden's handling of COVID has gone down when he's done everything he could possibly do.

People's approval isn't usually so nuanced, but still I think voters can (quite fairly, imo) place blame on Biden for the lower vaccination rates. His administration is in charge of the messaging and the messaging seems to be a failure lately. Also, the decision to start hyping up universal booster shots, which is still pretty dubious as it is, when there's still a sizable amount of people uneasy about getting the vaccine in the first place seems misguided and confusing. Again, the government's stance on COVID-19 is confusing, much like the chaos in Afghanistan is confusing. All this makes Biden seem weak and hapless.

[DaleCooper]

I think a bigger longterm threat to Biden's approval ratings will be the confusion surrounding COVID-19. Regardless of how anyone in this thread feels, our government's messaging basically went from "If you get vaccinated, you get your life back to normal" to "If you get vaccinated, you're still at risk and a risk to others and need to keep wearing masks and now need to get vaccinated again every 8 months and even then you probably still aren't safe." That's ultimately going to be much more frustrating to American voters than Afghanistan which is more complicated since even those who disapprove of him wanted us out of the region.

Not the government's fault. What else are they supposed to? If people don't get vaccinated, plans will have to (and they already have) changed. The anti vaccine and anti maskers are the ones that are ruining everything for everyone, so it's bewildering how Biden's handling of COVID has gone down when he's done everything he could possibly do.

People's approval isn't usually so nuanced, but still I think voters can (quite fairly, imo) place blame on Biden for the lower vaccination rates. His administration is in charge of the messaging and the messaging seems to be a failure lately. Also, the decision to start hyping up universal booster shots, which is still pretty dubious as it is, when there's still a sizable amount of people uneasy about getting the vaccine in the first place seems misguided and confusing. Again, the government's stance on COVID-19 is confusing, much like the chaos in Afghanistan is confusing. All this makes Biden seem weak and hapless.

Right, because Biden just randomly decided to allow booster shots. Seriously get a grip.

I said in my initial post "Regardless of how anyone in this thread feels . . ." meaning that I'm focusing on how I think recent decisions have affected his approval rating. Do you believe that this had no impact on Biden's approval? Or did you just see an opportunity to be rude to someone you disagree with?

[DaleCooper]

It's entirely possible for Biden to be relatively unpopular but also not hated with the same vitriol that Obama and Hillary were. I certainly haven't picked up on any real animosity towards Biden, even if people are disgusted by the direction the country is headed in. If anything, this is a bigger red flag for Democrats than it is for Biden, especially since he already outperformed them once.

[DaleCooper]

2014 was clearly based on people getting bored or frustrated with Obama than Republicans becoming popular.

Republicans don’t win (wave) elections because their party is popular, they win them because they’re seen as the lesser of two evils in a two-party system.

If you (and I don’t mean you but the people who have voiced this sentiment in this thread) "feel" like there’s not the same intense backlash against Biden as against Obama among the vast majority of those who disapprove of his performance, maybe you’re talking to the wrong people in the wrong places — this seems to be a general problem these days, not just among pollsters. In most red or bright red states (not just MT), Biden never even benefited from the kind of goodwill that Obama benefited from, and whatever goodwill he had/still has he’s trying hard to squander. I also think the blame very much lies with Pelosi/Schumer here as well — there’s a good chance he would be governing at least somewhat differently and less uncompromisingly if he didn’t have a trifecta, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking since he would have just issued way more executive orders then. Either way, the party is dragging him to the left and wants him to legislate like a president with veto-proof majorities, and the only notion of compromise this administration seems to believe in is one in which a gun is held to the head of the other side and the dominant party dictates the terms of the compromise.  

The reason this decline in Biden's approval numbers should concern Democrats isn’t because of the current situation in Afghanistan (most of this will eventually be forgotten and is unlikely to be much of an issue in November 2022) but rather because it suggests than Biden does not have an unshakable floor of ~48% he can count on to approve of him no matter what, i.e., like previous administrations, this one cannot rely on 'polarization' to save it from a widespread backlash at the polls. I’ve stopped counting the times when 'polarization' was supposed to result in an atypical midterm election — I was one of those who thought that we would see such a midterm in 2018 because Trump had changed everything and I was even 'feeling' the hidden backlash against obstructionist Democrats the day before Democrats flipped the Alabama Senate seat. Nearly all of us who regularly post on a forum like this live in a bubble, guys.

I also think the Democrats' messaging on COVID and (of course) culture issues is absolutely abysmal and will be the main reason for any red wave, certainly more so than some foreign policy blunder. It’s impossible to overstate just how out of touch they’re with large swathes of the country on these issues, and they’re doing their best to exacerbate this in what many people feel is just a country in which one party loves to spit on their values and rub it in their faces (Biden's flip-flip on Hyde is emblematic of this, as is the OR outdoor mask mandate for vaccinated and unvaccinated people). Just because you as a partisan Democrat don’t see why this might generate backlash or don’t 'feel' any backlash doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

This part is curious because it's clearly the Republican governors who are out of step with the American public, banning mask mandates for schools, etc. Pretty sure Dems are just as furious with the unvaccinated as everyone else, so unless you're specifically talking with CDC messaging, I'm not sure how Dems 'messaging' on COVID has been off? Numerous polls have shown that a majority of Americans support masks and vaccines.

I can tell you right now that you are shockingly out of touch with large swaths of the country if you think that mask mandates for the vaccinated and bi-annual COVID booster shots are broadly popular. Being in favor of common sense public health measures does not mean that they are also in favor of the blatant alarmism that we've reverted to over the last couple months.

[DaleCooper]

The word “populist” was always rather vacuous but describing Marco Rubio as one stretches the limits of disbelief.

Much like neoliberal, the word "populist" has been ruined by Trump supporters and Bernie Bros. Neoliberal now means people who don't want to abolish private insurance, and populist means people who whine about the establishment (another word that's been ruined lately) or Big Tech on Twitter of all places.

[DaleCooper]

I wonder how much of this is Afghanistan-related and how much of it is COVID-related. From my anecdotal experience, non-partisan Nebraska voters are more disgusted by the COVID situation than Afghanistan.

[DaleCooper]

I wonder how much of this is Afghanistan-related and how much of it is COVID-related. From my anecdotal experience, non-partisan Nebraska voters are more disgusted by the COVID situation than Afghanistan.

The frustrating thing is that the pandemic still going on really isn't his fault. What more can he do? We're at the point in the pandemic where the burden is entirely on dimwits who would rather eat horse paste than wear a mask or get vaccinated. That's what is so frustrating about the way this country reacts to the job of the President: if something goes wrong they go straight to "well, I hate Biden now."

 I suppose part of it might be the double-edged sword of him running on competence back in 2020. With how Americans' expectations are, if he does something even remotely imperfect it now means that he is the incompetent, dementia-addled man he was always accused of and that Trump would be better now, who got by on the reverse of getting a pat on the back when he didn't completely f*** something up.

It's why I am often just as frustrated with Democrats as I am with Republicans. If we want to bring balance back to this country, that is severely tipping in the direction of right wing autocracy, we have to be just as hackish as they are. You can criticize Biden all you like, it's fair in some circumstances, but we have to support him in spite of that since he is the only thing buying our country time until the next Republican trifecta irrevocably transforms it into the dystopia ("utopia" to them) they've always clamored for. Time is running out and we've already f***ed up so much.

The frustration comes from the liberal push to force more mandates on the vaccinated, which is in Biden and the Democrats' control.

[DaleCooper]

My prediction is that Biden's approval will remain low until we start finding a reasonable approach to the COVID situation, then it will increase again, possibly to where it hovered for a while up until recently.

[DaleCooper]

I honestly think the thing hurting the President's approval ratings is more fundamental and something the media is rarely talking about. (I think most of the other stuff is just kindling on a fire.) It's the rapidly increasing cost of groceries and day-to-day essentials. Speaking for myself, it's something I've noticed and almost everyone talks about in real life interactions. I'm not blaming Biden for it, but a lot of people probably are or are otherwise frustrated and taking it out on the party in power. If this doesn't get resolved, I think that is what could crush us in the midterms. The best price for a gallon of milk early this year was less than $1.50. Now it's closer to $2.50. There are a multitude of things I've seen in the grocery store jump in price by similar margins.

Where do you live where a gallon of milk is $1.50 or even $2.50? In Philly/Philly-area, it's always been closer to $3.50.

If I said where I bought it, I'm not sure I'm still allowed to have my red avatar. It hasn't been the lower price since spring. You just have to know how to shop. Yeah, I know plenty of places where it's $4 or even $4.50. I just don't buy it from those places, lol.

But on a more serious note and to what I said before, I do think that is having an effect. It's not inflation though. It's the supply chain issues. It's rippling all throughout the economy and I do believe it is hurting Biden's numbers.

I sense that the supply chain stuff is making people generally quite disgusted with the country at large, which of course results in lower approval for Biden, even if there isn't much outrage directed towards him specifically.

[DaleCooper]

If Biden were being smart he'd have stuck to his guns on COVID restrictions being essentially done. Just say we have a vaccine, please get it and protect yourself, but if you choose not to then that's your problem because we're moving on. If he had done that then his approvals would probably be somewhat closer to even. It's definitely not too late to do that, but I don't think he ever will.

[DaleCooper]

Is this fake or an outlier?

https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1681129259962712064

Almost certainly fake.