How many ties do you need to be told to stop comparing pre-election favorability with when someone is the president?? It's two completely different things.
The other two presidents before him had similar favorables before and after becoming president. Trump's favorables improved markedly after he became president infact.
Does Biden alone gets the excuse that "pre-election favorability" is completely different from post-election favorability?
Obama favorables before election day 2008: 56.86 favorable / 37.71% unfavorable (+19.15%)
Obama favorables before election day 2012: 51.57% fav / 45.14% unfav (+6.43%)
Obama final RCP average favorable: 59% / 36.1% (+22.9%)
Trump favorables before election day 2016: 38.57% fav / 57.71% unfav (-19.14%)
Trump favorables before election day 2020: 41.86% fav / 54.86% unfav (-13%)
A. Polarization is much different today than it was in 2008/2012.
B. Trump is a pretty separate case since he had the opposite effect, where his favorables were catastrophic before the election and they normalized somewhat when he was president.
The point is that all 3 of these are different contextual situations. It's the same with Hillary Clinton - her favorables were always better when she was *not running for president*, but changed when she was running for something/in the public eye. They're all just not comparable.
