Biden approval ratings thread, 1.0

[pbrower2a]

I don't know why there isn't a heavily-targeted campaign to get black people inoculated. Publications? Entertainment stars? Athletes? 

KKKOVID-19 kills black people.

[pbrower2a]

I honestly don't think he'll even be President in 2024.  He may resign just to give Kamala a chance to prove she can do the job.  That would be the best possible thing this man could do because he is not winning anything ever again.

There is always the possibility that some physician will give President Biden an offer that he can't refuse.

[pbrower2a]

POLITICO/Morning Consult
Sept 24-27

47% approve
50% disapprove

49/49 favorability

https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2021/09/27125043/2109161_crosstabs_POLITICO_RVs_v4_SH-1.pdf

The Hill;

47% Approve
42% disapprove

Does anyone have what the previous measures of approval and disapproval were? Usually I see plus or minus signs.

"Mediocre" is a large improvement over much of what we have seen in the last couple weeks.

47% in January or February 2024 practically ensures a Biden victory should he be running for re-election.

[pbrower2a]

https://twitter.com/MorningConsult/status/1441848227087753218

These people don't vote in midterms.

Nonsense BLK voters turned out heavily for Newsome

How did Elder do in SF, OAk, and LA BLK counties , you guys really believe that go ahead

Newsom won 63/36% and Elder didn't get any BLK support

T Mac is gonna get Blk support in Northern VA, these are nonsense


Let me ask you a question whom voted for Nadar and Johnson that cost Gore and Hillary the Election of, White middle class votes polls


Not Blk or Latino voters. And Ryan, Demings and Beasley can all win due to 12/25% BLK support in Red wall states

Why is Grassley up by 18, only 3 percent of Minorities live in IA


We represent 77% of the homeless and prison population along with Latinos and Arabs and Asians only 10% of Whites do

We are urban Poverty

Black people that I know despise tokens whether in commerce or politics. I guess that they know the signs. Some that I recognize:

1. taking positions contrary to the mainstream of the African-American population and expressing them loudly.
2. appearing in many places to get publicity more than to change things (such as company picnics).
3. having nebulous titles often related to public relations.
4. never doing something professionally difficult (legal, engineering, accounting, finance) or related to profit and loss (marketing, manufacturing manufacturing),

There are plenty of competent black people Out There. 

   

Making life harder and the consequences for failure more severe and damaging isn't particularly effective. If you believe that such does, then ask yourself whether whippings are popular in the educational system anymore. Punitive measures are more likely to appear in an order in which there are few rewards to offer -- as for plantation slaves, zeks of the Gulag, or the unfortunate people in KZ-lager in the Devil's Reich.

[pbrower2a]

It we go thru a Govt shutdown, Biden is gonna be at 40% Approval rating and he told us he was better than Bernie because he was Bipartisan, that's wasn't True

He also said he would get rid of virus and let all these immigrants in by stopping the Wall, hes gonna lose H seats in TX and FL, all of it takes is 5 seats in both states to flip control

I noticed they stopped polling FL too after Biden Approvals plummeted

The GOP idea of bipartisanship is that the Other Party gives up, clicks its heels, and moves in lockstep with it in confirming that the only purpose in human existence is to accept an extreme hierarchy of power and helplessness, indulgence and destitution, irresponsibility of elites but responsibility of those not in that elite to sacrifice everything to those elites,  and command and obedience. 

[pbrower2a]

What’s the matter with this country?

We finally get a leader who isn’t a total nutjob after 4 years of lunacy and he’s underwater in approval.

About 46% of Americans are perfectly happy with a complete nutcase as President. Look at how media have prepared people with confrontational "talk" shows in which people win points for belligerence. Who is more rhetorically belligerent than Donald Trump? He reminds me of the sort of person who would throw a chair on the Jerry Springer Show.  People actually watch that stuff. People also fall for televangelists who divide the world into the Saved (people like them) and the Damned (anyone who disagrees). And then look at some of the nutcases we have as Senators and Congress-critters.

Texas pols have all but banned abortion in the state and have sought to entrench their power by making voting more difficult for minorities and poor people. So defeat the feminists, conservationists, and liberals once and for all, much as did the KKK in the end in The Birth of a Nation. Yes, show the politically-defeated who is boss with the intent of rubbing it in and exploiting it more every chance.  

As for Texas -- part of the confrontational style of politics is to do everything to suggest to the Other Side is to break their hope. Break the hope of the Other Side and you have a regime (or at the least a political machine) that entrenches itself to the extent that the Other Side is completely irrelevant except as victims to suffer for the Elites -- like monopolist gougers little better than racketeers of the era of Al Capone and Lepke Buchalter. Worse, perhaps, because in the plutocratic nightmare the people getting killed by violence or hunger will have done nothing to deserve such. (I recall a column by the late great columnist Mike Royko, who compared Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Chicago-area thugs largely killed each other, but Marcos killed anybody of principle who got in his way.

Trumpism is not dead. It will survive him, and it may become more sophisticated and crushing in its techniques. It can morph into an ideology in which one's boss has the powers of a feudal lord over one. You will even vote as your boss tells you or give him your ballot as a proxy.

[pbrower2a]

The Republicans might be perfectly happy with privatization on the cheap. You know how that goes -- forward funds for turning the freeways into toll roads run by monopolistic gougers.   

[pbrower2a]

Challengers -- even Mitt Romney -- are vulnerable to negative ads. Those can be over things not related to the Presidency, like mass firings as an owner of an enterprise. Even putting a dog in an animal crate on the roof of a car for a long trip was a viral story that ended up hurting the Romney campaign:



Incumbents typically create and maintain the narrative, which makes them difficult to defeat unless the public has tired of them (the elder Bush.. well it was twelve years instead of eight years of basically the same policies) or either the economy or foreign policy (such as a war going badly) is a mess (Hoover 1932, Carter 1980). To this one could include Presidents not choosing to run for a term for which they were eligible (Truman 1952, Johnson 1968). Ford had never been elected Vice-President, so in 1976 he was running for his first electoral term and demonstrated the usual weaknesses of a Presidential nominee who had never been elected to any statewide office,

OK... Trump? He got elected in 2016 by winning the right votes  instead of winning the popular vote, and he proved extremely erratic as President... he did end up winning more popular votes in 2020 than in 2016, but largely because he won votes that would never swing a state. He did not win people over from the Other Side of the political spectrum. In a country as polarized as America is, demographics decide elections, and demographics hurt Trump in 2020 because Trump's constituency was more likely to die of cancer, strokes, and heart attacks related to age.

The retreat from Afghanistan is a political disaster, and President Biden is around when it happened. But this involves a treaty by the prior President, and the current one is stuck with it.   

[pbrower2a]

I seriously doubt that it's D plus six a 50/48 Election is D plus 2(3 pts, but if his Approvals jump to 53(47 it's a whole new ballgame

We are level pegging like Nate Silver said with a 304 map but anything can happen in a yr

Kelly is only up by 2 pts

And we don't know how long it's gonna take for D's to raise the Debt Ceiling any delay in SSA checks Biden will be endangered and so will T Mac in VA.
But, I am optimistic, but D's knew 10 wks Rs wàsnt gonna raise Debt Ceiling and they Dared them and Rs didn't blink

Also, we have a Medicare Expansion that won't take effect til 2028 and the reason why we had 29T in debt is due to Unemployment benefits 300 extra and tax cuts

1400 checks were tip of iceberg but it was the Federal Unemployment benefits

Do not predict any trend at this stage other than bounce-back, barring a justifiable change in perception. Such would be a personal scandal, a bungled war, or an economic meltdown.

If the already-inoculated are not getting sick and dying of COVID-19, they are getting sick and tired of people getting COVID-19, clogging hospital emergency rooms, exhausting public funds in medical treatment (ICU treatment devours personal assets and makes public charges out of the ill), and dying. I will probably have a booster shot (late November or early December)  before a big chunk of America has yet to get inoculated. Some things defy explanation.

Republicans keep telling us that catastrophic failure is nigh -- but Trump sealed the fate of Afghanistan, and the only catastrophic social reality is that people are still contracting and dying of COVID-19.

 

[pbrower2a]

It looks like Biden is bottoming out

As the COVID summer surge fades Biden may do well again

He needs the economy to work

That is what I expect and see, although it is not definitive.

I can't say whether statewide polls lag or lead.

...Obviously the economy must not melt down, but this isn't the middle of the Double-Zero decade in which a corrupt speculative boom was peaking. At that time I saw an article in Business Week in which the article delineated a scandal of questionable ratings of residential loans. Ordinarily the packaging of a large number of solid loans is good for reducing risk to near zero. Packaging fecal loans might reduce risk slightly, but not enough to make those loans safe. Whether the raters were corrupt or applied an inappropriate model for the lack of anything better is unclear, but I read that article and predicted a 1929-style crash. Which we got!

We now have a housing shortage, which reflects itself in super-cautious lending. The only people for whom housing is being built are, frankly, rich people who can afford over-priced McMansions. Meanwhile, rentals skyrocket for everyone else, and economic inequality intensifies. The biggest expenditure that a large number of Americans have is property rent... and, no, it is not because insurance, property taxes, and maintenance are skyrocketing.  

COVID-19 will die, but only after it takes substantially more lives in its lethal slaughter. More than already? Of course not. That the victims are heavily on the Right side of the political spectrum suggests that America will lean increasingly Democratic in 2022 and 2024. Demographics are everything in a highly-polarized society in which people change their views slowly if at all.

[pbrower2a]

Probably the low point. He can´t convince his hardened opposition, but who can? Trump couldn´t convince his, either, so this says more about America than about our politicians. At the least President Biden isn´t a thoroughly hideous person as was (and is) President Trump.

[pbrower2a]

Jan 6th is old news, Trump isn't gonna be Prez anyways, HE WAS A 46.9% PREZ not a 60% Approval Prez like he Acts like he was. but spending 3T dollars in the face of budget DEFICITS is gonna be hard

The Debt Ceiling increase is due Oct 18th and Biden needs R support to increase it, he promised Bipartisanship and he hasn't invited one R to WH since infrastructure bill in Summer time

Minting a trillion dollar coin is THE LAST RESORT, Schumer is gonna dare Rs to block the Debt Ceiling increase again and the Rs will block it again, the D's have 2 wks to pass the Dent Ceiling increase and they won't start the Reconciliation Bill

But, FL and TX are lost due to illegals immigration and Parliamentary denied immigration reform, at least in short term

Demings is only down by 4

January 6 is a day of shame for many Republicans who fail to recognize that just because they win a primary election does not mean that they are shoo-ins for re-election. December 7, September 11, January 6... there will be living people who remember all three dates in 2022 and 2024 having been past toddler age when those dates became immediately and indelibly infamous. .

Many Republicans botched the response to COVID-19. They got away with it at first because the first people to die in large numbers were older members of minority groups, especially in such areas as Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, and Philadelphia (get it!) who were going to vote Democratic if at all... but COVID-19 is now decimating populations on the Right side of the political spectrum.  It's people on the Right side of the spectrum who don''t wear masks and don't get inoculated who contract COVID-19 and die... now. 

President Biden is gambling that Republicans either see goodies for their conservative states worth voting for or risk being defeated by Democrats in the next election. There might be some desirable highway and water projects. It's not a wild gamble. 

[pbrower2a]

The issue for Biden's approval is that his Presidency has been washed up. In the beginning there was a wave of enthusiasm for him since there was a promised return to normal. The issue is people don't remember what normal was. The Obama era was a disaster for democrats and Biden's attempt to return to that era could potentially cause similar issues. Unlike Obama however, this time Democrats came in with the slimmest Congressional majorities in decades, thus killing any potential for significant legislation. DC statehood, HR1, whatever their priorities are were out the window in January when Sinema and Manchin were against removing the filibuster. That's basically half of whatever Biden's actual policy proposal was. (Not being Trump doesn't count as policy.)

No more washed-up than Ronald Reagan´s Presidency was in October 1981. If you wish to call the Obama Presidency a disaster... then what can you say of the Trump Presidency? (OK, Obama was an unmitigated disaster if you were Osama bin Laden, but that is something that no patriotic America could not cheer). Obama is an excellent model of behavior for a President. Much of the enthusiasm about President Biden is that he is not Donald Trump.

Now they might not even get infrastructure through and even if the bipartisan bill passes, its not really something Democrats can campaign on in the midterms since Republicans also votepp d for it. If they somehow pull off a diluted reconciliation bill after this embarrassing failure, then that will be the final piece of Biden's agenda as he becomes a lame duck like Obama was for the next 2 or 6 years.

Since when is hurting the people who voted against one a good policy? That´s what Trump tried to do, and when one has the shakiest win of the Electoral College ever, one would wisely seek to find fresh supporters faster than one creates dissidents. Trump lost an election that a mediocre President should have won handily.

Covid isn't going away anytime soon, and the economy isn't roaring back either. The dust has pretty much settled on the virus, half the country is ready to move on, the other half doesn't want to go back to normal life anytime soon. Inflation is soaring, and there is no way this is simply transitory. If the White House is showing off that a 4th of July cookout is $0.16 cheaper than the previous year (when in reality it is more due to higher gas prices needed to buy the goods) then there is fundamentally something wrong.

Had President Trump handled COVID-19 right, then we would be through with it early in the his second term. Maybe not before, but the progress would be obvious because as a convincing leader people would have worn masks all winter while the vaccines rolled out. People would have never gotten quack medical advice because even his opponents would be getting inoculated.

We have never had a President who has shown such contempt for American lives as Donald Trump, at least since before the Civil War. (Slavery was contempt for life, in case you wonder about that exception). We have never had a President who so readily turned to catcalls when anyone called him out for a controversial policy. 

Afghanistan was the biggest failure of the Biden Presidency. He ran on being a strong global leader but after August it was pretty obvious that Biden was incompetent on foreign policy. The American people recognized that and it put him underwater which he might not recover from, at least until 2022.

Trump cut the deal and told the Taliban to go ahead after the US election was settled. At that the Taliban met the terms of the deal. Don´t you think that a free election would have been a more fitting end to the Afghan civil war? Then again, our 45th President showed contempt for electoral results that did not go his way.

[pbrower2a]

The issue for Biden's approval is that his Presidency has been washed up. In the beginning there was a wave of enthusiasm for him since there was a promised return to normal. The issue is people don't remember what normal was. The Obama era was a disaster for democrats and Biden's attempt to return to that era could potentially cause similar issues. Unlike Obama however, this time Democrats came in with the slimmest Congressional majorities in decades, thus killing any potential for significant legislation. DC statehood, HR1, whatever their priorities are were out the window in January when Sinema and Manchin were against removing the filibuster. That's basically half of whatever Biden's actual policy proposal was. (Not being Trump doesn't count as policy.)

Now they might not even get infrastructure through and even if the bipartisan bill passes, its not really something Democrats can campaign on in the midterms since Republicans also voted for it. If they somehow pull off a diluted reconciliation bill after this embarrassing failure, then that will be the final piece of Biden's agenda as he becomes a lame duck like Obama was for the next 2 or 6 years.

Covid isn't going away anytime soon, and the economy isn't roaring back either. The dust has pretty much settled on the virus, half the country is ready to move on, the other half doesn't want to go back to normal life anytime soon. Inflation is soaring, and there is no way this is simply transitory. If the White House is showing off that a 4th of July cookout is $0.16 cheaper than the previous year (when in reality it is more due to higher gas prices needed to buy the goods) then there is fundamentally something wrong.

Afghanistan was the biggest failure of the Biden Presidency. He ran on being a strong global leader but after August it was pretty obvious that Biden was incompetent on foreign policy. The American people recognized that and it put him underwater which he might not recover from, at least until 2022.

And your guy attempted a deadly coup after he lost re-election.

This doesn't negate what he said. Biden shouldn't be given a completely free pass just because of what happened on January 6.

Agreed, and I've been critical of Biden on some things, namely Afghanistan.

But I'm tired of Trump voters acting like they suddenly give a damn when their guy literally tried to overthrow our entire government.  Everything else pales in comparison to that.

I understand what you're saying also. It is unfortunate that the events of January 6 have already been forgotten by most Americans.

So far the convictions are plea bargains, which is understandable for people who did not do or threaten violence and do not have prior convictions for crimes.  Plea bargains lack the drama of formal trials and are easy to forget. When people start getting the federal trials because they would risk twenty years to avoid one sure year or have no choice because they did or threatened violence or threatened national security, the trials will get media attention.

It's impossible to see how the Capitol Putsch will play in elections because it has yet to become an issue in any elections (except perhaps for the two run-off elections in Georgia for the US Senate seats being held that day!) Democrats have little to lose by exploiting it for political purposes against any incumbent Republican who didn't make a clear and prompt condemnation of the Putsch. If the two run-off elections in Georgia say anything, then the GOP is in deep trouble.

   

[pbrower2a]

The issue for Biden's approval is that his Presidency has been washed up. In the beginning there was a wave of enthusiasm for him since there was a promised return to normal. The issue is people don't remember what normal was. The Obama era was a disaster for democrats and Biden's attempt to return to that era could potentially cause similar issues. Unlike Obama however, this time Democrats came in with the slimmest Congressional majorities in decades, thus killing any potential for significant legislation. DC statehood, HR1, whatever their priorities are were out the window in January when Sinema and Manchin were against removing the filibuster. That's basically half of whatever Biden's actual policy proposal was. (Not being Trump doesn't count as policy.)

Now they might not even get infrastructure through and even if the bipartisan bill passes, its not really something Democrats can campaign on in the midterms since Republicans also voted for it. If they somehow pull off a diluted reconciliation bill after this embarrassing failure, then that will be the final piece of Biden's agenda as he becomes a lame duck like Obama was for the next 2 or 6 years.

Covid isn't going away anytime soon, and the economy isn't roaring back either. The dust has pretty much settled on the virus, half the country is ready to move on, the other half doesn't want to go back to normal life anytime soon. Inflation is soaring, and there is no way this is simply transitory. If the White House is showing off that a 4th of July cookout is $0.16 cheaper than the previous year (when in reality it is more due to higher gas prices needed to buy the goods) then there is fundamentally something wrong.

Afghanistan was the biggest failure of the Biden Presidency. He ran on being a strong global leader but after August it was pretty obvious that Biden was incompetent on foreign policy. The American people recognized that and it put him underwater which he might not recover from, at least until 2022.

And your guy attempted a deadly coup after he lost re-election.

This doesn't negate what he said. Biden shouldn't be given a completely free pass just because of what happened on January 6.

Agreed, and I've been critical of Biden on some things, namely Afghanistan.

But I'm tired of Trump voters acting like they suddenly give a damn when their guy literally tried to overthrow our entire government.  Everything else pales in comparison to that.

I understand what you're saying also. It is unfortunate that the events of January 6 have already been forgotten by most Americans.

So far the convictions are plea bargains, which is understandable for people who did not do or threaten violence and do not have prior convictions for crimes.  Plea bargains lack the drama of formal trials and are easy to forget. When people start getting the federal trials because they would risk twenty years to avoid one sure year or have no choice because they did or threatened violence or threatened national security, the trials will get media attention.

It's impossible to see how the Capitol Putsch will play in elections because it has yet to become an issue in any elections (except perhaps for the two run-off elections in Georgia for the US Senate seats being held that day!) Democrats have little to lose by exploiting it for political purposes against any incumbent Republican who didn't make a clear and prompt condemnation of the Putsch. If the two run-off elections in Georgia say anything, then the GOP is in deep trouble.

  

Demings Ryan are only down 4 pts a blue wave with IL, NY and CA Redistricting at stake can still happen, A 225H MAJORITY and a 53 seat or 54 seat Majority in the Senate can still happen

States don't always vote the way they should that's why Tester, Brown
and Manchin won in 2012 in a Prez yr and won again along with Sinema while Ducey and DeWine won OH and AZ in 2018

53 seats plus the H gives us DC Statehood and Ryan is overperforming in polls as well as Demings like Sherrod Brown, they should be down 8


CALTRINA DOESN'T BELIEVE IN WAVES LIKE ME OR YOU PBOWER2A, HE BELIEVES IN THE 304 map, if that's the case we shouldn't run Wave insurance candidates

Oh, NC and FL are still swing states but not tipping pt in a close Election, once we get 278 it's over anyways once we clinch WI

I see waves and counter-waves in partisan politics. Wave elections are real, but those waves sweep in some political figures who show that they are not up to the job, prove to be extremists in 'moderate' communities, or ill fit the local culture. But these waves are small in contrast to the generational waves that reflect the values of older people dying off and younger people coming of age. For some people, voting is the personal deed that defines adulthood.

The constituencies behind Gingrich's Contract with America, the Tea Party, and the "Trump Train" are beginning to shrink rapidly as their oldest constituencies die off without obvious replacement. Oh, that's politics? The same thing holds with commerce, too. I look at old restaurant chains such as Howard Johnson's, Steak and Ale, Perkins',  and Big Boy that were once everywhere and are now nowhere. Maybe there is a fault with the chain. Howard Johnson's didn't adapt its menu to a changing America; Perkins' offered a nostalgia for an America that many Americans now find absurd and irrelevant; Big Boy stuck to over-priced hamburgers as the mainstay of its offerings when people could get food just as good at a fat-food place; Steak and Ale seemed too tied to norms of an English-Irish-German population when America was becoming less clearly English, Irish, and German. I also look at the traditional department store. If you are old enough you remember when Sears, JC Penney, and Montgomery-Ward were big players in shopping. As it turns out those places had little youth appeal back in the 1980's, and the only young people in such places were store employees or small children being dragged along by parents or grandparents. The average age of a customer in those bloated department stores was near sixty back in the mid-1980's, indicating that these places needed to find new customers if they were not going to become irrelevant and die. As it is, Montgomery-Ward is no more; Sears is dying; JC Penney is on life-support. Think also of the less-grand places such as G C Murphy, Woolworth's, Ames', and  M E Moses. Oh, you don't think of them because they are gone?

Any business model that depends upon  older customers must cultivate newer customers to offset those that go to that Great Shopping Mall in the Sky.. or whatever. Nursing homes remain in business and remain lucrative because people need them at a certain point in their lives; in those they end up spending whatever inheritance their children or grandchildren might otherwise expect. The giant department stores of the 1980's may have thought young people mostly as shoplifters (and they treated their employees as people who were going to steal from them because, as was well understood in the 1980's, young poor people were poor customers but likely embezzlers even if employees)... and lost the faith of potential customers that they would need twenty years later, Employees unfortunate enough to work in such places saw employment in those stores at best as ways in which to mark time while hating their jobs and the poverty that went with them before going elsewhere and did not stick around long enough to become potential innovators who knew what they were doing. 

American politics is modeled to no small degree on commerce, including a heavy reliance on advertising. A political agenda that appeals to people around age 45 in 1990 needs to find an adequate number of replacements in thirty years if it is to not age into irrelevancy.  What are people doing most reliably around age 75? Well, they are starting to go to that Great Shopping Center in the Sky instead of to the one close-by that has Sears and JC Penney as anchors... or whatever analogy you wish to give.

Ghosts are not reliable customers even around Halloween, and the nonagenarian age group just does not have the numbers to swing even the closest elections.       

[pbrower2a]

Eventually things have to turn around, right?

That did not work for Carter but it almost worked for Carter.

[pbrower2a]

IDB/TIPP

approve; 44%
Disapprove; 40%

Link: https://www.investors.com/politics/president-joe-biden-job-approval-stabilizes-but-not-among-this-group-ibd-tipp-poll/

Last month was 44/43.

P.S. It's "IBD" for Investor's Business Daily.

It's the level of disapproval that kills a candidacy for re-election. I look at the 40% disapproval and recognize that President Biden is in better political shape than when America withdrew from Afghanistan.

[pbrower2a]

IDB/TIPP

approve; 44%
Disapprove; 40%

Link: https://www.investors.com/politics/president-joe-biden-job-approval-stabilizes-but-not-among-this-group-ibd-tipp-poll/

Last month was 44/43.

P.S. It's "IBD" for Investor's Business Daily.

It's the level of disapproval that kills a candidacy for re-election. I look at the 40% disapproval and recognize that President Biden is in better political shape than when America withdrew from Afghanistan.

44% is a danger zone for Prez, because it's the exact where Prez loses H of Reps, every Prez since Eisenhower have lost seats in H of Rep per Gallup at 44%

But, Biden is trying to pass a 4 T stimulus bill on Health care and Mcconnell just rejected Biden on raising the Debt Ceiling on 51 not 60 votes

I am not saying that Biden won't recover, D's knew 10 wks that Rs weren't gonna help D's with Debt Ceiling and D's like Bernie and Warren kept saying McConnell was bluffing, they're not that crazy, yes he is


They went on a mnth vacation without doing anything on VR or Debt Ceiling

The real danger comes from disapproval numbers. It is possible to raise approval numbers with campaigning. To undo disapproval is difficult. The reality that caused the disapproval is typically must reverse to cut into the disapproval.

[pbrower2a]

Assume that 45% of the voters are MAGA types, and 45% are Bernie Sanders socialists, and 10% are centrists. 100% of the voters would prefer that centrists be in power rather than the 45% cohort that they are not a part of. What voting system would elect what 100% of the voters agree is the least bad alternative to their cohort being in power? It seems to me that there is no good way to get there, other than perhaps a German proportional parliamentary system if one gets past a 5% threshold. And then there would probably be a minority government of one cohort or the other. And that won't work unless the power of the executive branch is watered down.

The German system still ended up with Satan Incarnate, but later than a first-past-the-post system like ours would have done had we had a Klan figure (make no mistake; the Nazis learned some of their political techniques from the Klan) who got 47% of the vote with the others split the vote 45-8. Yes, the Second Klan would have been that bad with some horrific "Kloncentration Klamps".

The problem is that our system has polarized so severely. This said, Bernie Sanders would be an elder statesman of the Social Democratic Party if he were a German pol, and Donald Trump would be with the Alternative für Deutschland, Of course comparisons between contemporary America and the Weimar Republic should not make similar assumptions of the dynamic realities of of political orders with different heritage and circumstances.

[pbrower2a]

Ipsos Core Political Data (weekly), Oct. 6-7, 1005 adults

Approve 48 (+2)
Disapprove 47 (-3)

Before today, Biden was last above water in this poll four weeks ago, when he was at 47/46.

The change is just outside the 4% margin of error. It is likely real.

[pbrower2a]

What’s with all the trash polls lately

Many polls have large numbers of undecided.

COVID-19 should be gone by now, except that huge numbers of people fail to get inoculated. The President can't compel inoculations, but anyone who does not get inoculated is a fool. Can one fault the President for failing to convince people brainwashed into believing that inoculation will turn them into zombies or do something similarly horrible? 

[pbrower2a]

Start watching the state polls. 50-48 nationwide polls suggest different results in the states than do 42-50 polls.

...The problem with the cheap gas of a year ago (really a year and a half ago) was that there was no place to go. 

[pbrower2a]

Start watching the state polls. 50-48 nationwide polls suggest different results in the states than do 42-50 polls.

...The problem with the cheap gas of a year ago (really a year and a half ago) was that there was no place to go. 

Unfortunately, there are few outlets that have reputable state polls at this point.

Probably because we lack valid measures of the demographic effects of 700K deaths upon the character of the electorate.

[pbrower2a]

Trump has a cult. He excites people even if he offends more.  Biden is the opposite.

[pbrower2a]

Florida:

www.victory-insights.com

 
(D) Favorability by Candidate

We asked poll respondents if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Biden,
Harris, DeSantis, and Trump, and several key patterns emerged. First of all,
DeSantis had the highest favorability (55%), followed by Trump (52%), Biden (51%),
and Harris (47%). DeSantis also had the highest “Very Favorable” percentage (42%),
as well as the lowest “Very Unfavorable” percentage (35%), indicating he’s in a
strong position in his home state. Harris, on the other hand, had the highest “Very
Unfavorable” percentage and the lowest “Very Favorable” percentage, indicating
that she maintains very low popularity in the state.

https://victory-insights.com/files/FLPresidentialPoll_Sep2021.pdf

This is not an approval poll, but favorability is usually close to approval at this stage. Biden lost Florida in 2020, so if he is above water in Florida he is almost certainly  above even nationwide,.