Biden approval ratings thread, 1.0

[pbrower2a]

Is it too early?

Favorability

Approval

[pbrower2a]

https://twitter.com/apalmerdc/status/1329035321846194176

What was the highest Trump got? Didn't he start out the gate in January 2019 around inauguration with like 49% approval or something?

Interested to see how high the 'intro bump' is for Biden/Harris.

The first polls typically begin with measures of favorability (optimism about the winning pol).

It was an inauspicious start for Trump. Most who voted against him had very low expectations. Regrettably, Trump failed to meet that.  

[pbrower2a]

Hot take: the Biden presidency will have an almost as stable approval rating as the Trump administration.

Stable but higher. America came through the 2020 Presidential election as polarized as ever, and I would say the same thing whether President-elect Biden won 270 or 416 electoral votes. (Alaska went for Trump by 10.09% of the margin of the popular vote. Maybe Alaskans don't like a President unusually cozy with Vladimir Putin, which might not be such a concern in 2024). 

[pbrower2a]

Any approval level above 50% will be tough to maintain even for a good President. This is Obama territory. Biden hasn't made many mistakes, and he has Trump against which to contrast. There will be difficult choices,

...America is in a rough time due to COVID-19. The casualties are typical of one of the military crises of the American past (Revolutionary War, Civil War, and World War II, all about one long lifespan apart) but the character of leadership through the current crisis could hardly be worse. Trump has us in a costly stalemate that ends only when the Other Side runs out of troops -- more like World War I in most of Europe. That war came to an end when Germany ran out of troops, and the way Trump is leading this Crisis, COVID-19 will lose the war when it runs out of people to infect.

We have surpassed 250,000 deaths for nothing. At least in the American Revolution we shed off a King who had taken away freedoms that people in the Colonies had taken for granted. In the Civil War the Union side emancipated slaves, and in the Second World War America did another pair of great emancipations.

We cannot avoid major, long-term changes in the way that we Americans do things. We will go back to some of our old habits of mass events from rock concerts to church services to sporting events. Masks are a life-saving expedient, but not all that convenient. They will be good for preventing the spread of contagious diseases. We are going to change the way in which we work. Much that we used to do on the cheap because it was good for maximizing profits will no longer be so done.

President Biden will have the good fortune to be around when the vaccine for COVID-19 is found and is mass distributed. The economy will be more stable and likely more equitable. Movies will be filmed again, and people will again attend sporting events. How rotten Donald Trump is will sink in to more minds; following a failure and undoing the damage puts one in a good position to be an above-average President. Just look at Obama.

What has yet to change over a couple decades is the regional polarization of America.  In 1976, only nineteen states and the District of Columbia were decided by 10% or larger margins. In 2000, fully twenty-eight states were decided by 10% or more. In 2008, a full thirty-four states and the District of Columbia were decided by 10% or more (in case anyone attributes that to 'race' because of Barack Obama, the polarization was between the states was already high in 2000, and that had nothing to do with race. In 2020 fully thirty-six states and the District of Columbia were decided by 10% or more. So many states are effectively uncompetitive, which may suggest that cultural identity means more in politics than does the quality of service.

I can tell you about two countries in which cultural identity meant more than political service: Spain in the 1930's and Yugoslavia in the 1990's. Spain may have been nearly uniform in religion, but it was neatly divided between areas about as modern as New England in thought and cultural tastes... and people who still harbored almost medieval ideas on how to live, like Francisco Franco whose only concession to modernity was on technology of war, repression, and manufacturing. 

Here is an example of an exponent of the very modern part of intellectual Spain in the 1930's:



Guernica, Pablo Picasso

in response to this:

 

Guernica, work achieved by the Luftwaffe in collaboration with Francisco Franco.

... OK. The urban-rural divide in American culture is huge. Atlanta and its suburbs are much more similar to Chicago and its suburbs than to rural areas on the fringe of TV reception from those cities. People in Greater Chicago often feel alien in places like Kankakee. Then there is the joke about Atlanta: Atlanta is a fully-modern metropolitan area surrounded by Georgia.   Suburbia is becoming literally urban, at least in the sense that suburbanites go downtown to get their culture. People in rural America generally must settle with Wal*Mart for their culture, except for the movie theater, cable TV, or radio. 

[pbrower2a]

Covid isn't deadly unless you have an underlying heart disease or cancer and the Homeless are the main ones as carriers if the virus. The reason why we got Covid is the fact we never got a handle on the TB crisis, which is it's first cuz Covid.

We are still gonna have to socially distance til the future and we are in a new economy, a lot of jobs aren't coming back, but deaths of the virus will be eliminated

Korea which shows Korean Baseball ⚾ shows people attending ballgames but with masks but no Concessionaires

Age. I am 64, and even if I do not have heart trouble, cancer, diabetes, STD's, drug addiction, or cirrhosis I already have a pre-existing condition in age alone. COVID-19 scares me as AIDS did thirty years ago.

Did you hear what Kristen Urquiza had to say at the Democratic National Convention?

"My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life...The coronavirus has made it clear that there are two Americas; the America that Donald Trump lives in and the America that my father died in. Enough is enough. Donald Trump may not have caused the coronavirus, but his dishonesty and his irresponsible actions made it so much worse"

— Kristin Urquiza at the 2020 Democratic National Convention

I am one year younger than Mark Urquiza was when he died of COVID-19, I am not Hispanic, and I do not live in Arizona. I have seen Donald Trump as a questionable character since I first heard of him, and he has done nothing to gain my trust. Other than that... I could have died like Mark Urquiza because my differences with him are superficial at most.   

250,000 deaths and counting in a bungled stalemate in war is not in American taste. America has surpassed deaths on the Union side in the Civil War and is approaching the 321,871 deaths and missing-in-action from combat (and probably custody) in World War II -- with the recent surge in COVID-19 cases that seem to follow super-spreader events this autumn I see no reason to believe that we won't surpass military deaths of American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marines in WWII by the time that Joe Biden is inaugurated.

At least with World War II the US Army emancipated people in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Mauthausen and put an end to gangster regimes in (Vichy) France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. 

Until America wins the war (and it is a war, at least from the standpoint of casualties) against COVID-19 we will endure mass death. Speaking of wars -- by now the largest group of wartime veterans of any American war are Vietnam-era veterans. Soldiers who faced an enemy as dangerous as the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army now face an even deadlier one in COVID-19.

...as for South Korea... I have never been there, but from what I have heard if I ever went there I might say "I have seen the future, and it works!" (you know where that line comes from!)

[pbrower2a]

I remember seeing approval numbers near 60% nationwide for Barack Obama in early 2009. 

[pbrower2a]

High unemployment at the start of the Biden Administration will be faulted upon Donald Trump and COVID-19.

[pbrower2a]

I remember seeing approval numbers near 60% nationwide for Barack Obama in early 2009.  

He was over 60% until early June, then collapsed. Was in the mid-40s by December, where he remained for most of the rest of his presidency.

Mid-forties a year before the election is typically just enough for winning re-election for an incumbent Governor or Senator. What really kills an incumbent's chances of winning re-election is typically disapproval numbers. Obama didn't get much above 50% disapproval in any state that he eventually won. At any time I see 100-disapproval as the ceiling for the electoral result for an incumbent.  It is possible to get 49% of the popular vote in a state and still win it in a nearly two-way race due to third-party nominees who allow a 49-47-3 split of the vote. Getting 55% disapproval means that one must win with 45% of the vote. For obvious reasons that almost never works. Few phenomena make an incumbent able to come back from 53% disapproval.

Cultural change going in his favor? That precludes his initial election. New voters coming to his side? That rarely works because there just aren't enough new voters. Throwing money at voters through subsidies? That brought Trump closer than otherwise, especially very rural states and Rust Bowl states getting so rusty that agriculture becomes a larger share of the electorate.

Practically all elected Presidents, like Governors and Senators, lose some support once they start governing or legislating. A spirited and competent campaign against the 'average' challenger is good for raising support about 6.5% on the average for an incumbent, according to Nate Silver in his Myth of 50%. This explains why

(1) incumbents with 43% or 44% approval at the start of the electoral season get elected, but those with less generally don't -- but those with even 45% approval (or who match up as 45% against a generic opponent from the opposition party) typically slip by. Incumbents who have support in the middle-30's range rarely run for re-election because they know that defeat looms.

(2) those with even 50% approval (or who match up as 45% against a generic opponent from the opposition party) typically win by large margins and lose only if they do something so egregious as to have a "Macaca" moment (Senator George Allen, Jr.) while in a race with an unusually-strong opponent. It is possible to throw away the advantage of incumbency with initial support near 50%; it does not happen often.

(3) appointed pols do less well in getting re-elected because they typically did nothing that suggests that they could ever win the seat Senators Bennett (R-CO), Smith (D-MN), and Scott (R-SC) have shown that they were solid-enough politicians or well fit the political cultures of their states... in contrast to the spouse of someone who died in office, some political hack serving perhaps a dying machine, or someone 'honored' for long and distinguished service to his state's party.

(4) in case you wonder how the system works with politicians on whom scandals are about to break... the journalists who cover the politicians know that something bad is going on and never write or report positively about such a pol. Such pols are typically more secretive and less ebullient than others, and such is not good for setting up an upcoming victory. If "Governor Graft" is taking bribes from contractors for diverting a freeway project toward the property of big donors, then the public is the last to know. The media are cautious about breaking such a story.

(5) So what about major changes in the political climate, such as a surge of right-wing populism in 2010? That showed by early 2010. Incumbent Democrats were in trouble in most states, and that remained a stable reality.

...Obama was always in a position in which he was likely to win re-election, which is more than anyone could say about Donald Trump after spring 2017.

We will see Gallup nationwide polls (Gallup does not do statewide polls) that will contrast Biden to Trump, Obama, and other Presidents back to Truman. Gallup may not be a great pollster, but it has more historical data than any other pollster.  We will see analogues for other Presidents of the past, and we will see whether he is a mirror image of Donald Trump or a liberal version of Ronald Reagan, or whatever is in between.

[pbrower2a]

The Economist/YouGov weekly tracker, Nov. 21-24, 1500 RV

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way President-Elect Joe Biden is handling the post-election period?"

Approve 55 (+1)
Disapprove 37 (+3)

Strongly approve 40 (-1)
Strongly disapprove 26 (nc)

That looks almost like a mirror image of some polls that I associated with Trump. Such explains why it seems like a non-change... until one reads around the numbers.

I will never miss numbers like this that I often saw with Trump:

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way President Trump is performing the duties of the Presidency?"

Approve 37
Disapprove 55

Strongly approve 26
Strongly disapprove 40

The problem wasn't that those numbers appeared. The problem was that we had a President for whom such numbers were so amply earned.

[pbrower2a]

Here's Gallup:

These findings are from a postelection survey conducted Nov. 5-19, a period during which Trump's legal team was challenging the results in a number of states. The increase in Biden's favorability between Gallup's final preelection and first postelection readings is driven by independents and Republicans, whose positive ratings of Biden grew from 48% to 55% and 6% to 12%, respectively. Democrats' nearly unanimous positive ratings remained constant.

Trump's slightly lower postelection favorable rating is owed more to Republicans than independents or Democrats. Republicans' rating of the president fell six points to 89%, while it was essentially unchanged among independents and static among Democrats.

Pre- and Postelection Favorable Readings of Presidential Candidates, 2000-2020
% of Americans with a favorable opinion

Final preelection reading   Postelection reading (Nov/Dec)   Change
%
%
pct. pts.
2020   
Joe Biden           49   55   +6
Donald Trump   45   42   -3
2016   
Donald Trump   34   42   +8
Hillary Clinton   43   43     0
2012   
Barack Obama   55   58   +3
Mitt Romney   46   50   +4
2008   
Barack Obama   62   68   +6
John McCain   50   64   +14
2004   
George W. Bush   51   60   +9
John Kerry      52   NA   NA
2000*   
George W. Bush   55   59   +4
Al Gore           56   57   +1

...my comment:

Donald Trump had a big hole to dig himself out of in 2016, and he may have had far less chance than the average President of building credibility for the next election. He had great difficulty developing rapport with people who voted against him in 2016, and even if he went from getting 45.93% of the popular vote to 47.07% of the popular vote in 2020, he ended up with less than enough in 2020.

It is far easier to govern if one begins with a well-filled reservoir of credibility and hope among the people. Lowered expectations may be easier to achieve, but those are inadequate in the long run. Lowered expectations (the Trump Presidency in 2016) become irrelevant when viable alternatives emerge. Consider the clunker vehicle that you tolerate as you hold a crappy, low-paying job while you attend a vocational-technical course at the community college. You go from being an oil-change 'specialist' to a well-paid technician. Do you go to the tote-the-note lot for another car when that clunker becomes unsafe and unreliable or do you go for a better car, one much newer (or even new)? You know the story.

[pbrower2a]

High unemployment at the start of the Biden Administration will be faulted upon Donald Trump and COVID-19.

Not in a million years. Do we remember how many people blamed bush for high employment early in the Obama Administration, even though the economic collapse clearly took place on his watch and he merely handed Obama the keys after the car was on fire?

Voters always always always blame the person in charge when things aren't going bad. Biden will be no exception

Voters didn’t blame Obama until his second year. He had 60% approvals for his entire first year. And it makes sense why voters started blaming Obama - unemployment only got worse from Jan 2009 to March 2010 despite stimulus being passed.

Unemployment is a lagging indicator.  Mass employers are chary of laying off large numbers of workers when the economy starts to go into a downturn because few people think that what proves to be a long and severe downturn will be one before it is a long and severe one. Most businesses are optimists when the downturn starts (it won't be that bad) but pessimists when things seem to pick up (it might not be real; this might be a suckers' rally). Usually there is a reduction in hours worked by existing staff during a recession, and when things pick up, so do hours worked by existing employees. Sporadic overtime might be preferable to hiring (and training) new workers.

Sales volume rises, inventories finally get reduced, orders for raw materials increase, hours worked on the job increase, more building permits are applied for and issued... the first people fired or laid off in an economic downturn are generally  not the first people that one wants to rehire.   

[pbrower2a]

Unemployment is considered UBI now due to the Economy and the Fed Unemployment is gonna be ending Dec 26th, which suits Rs fine, Unemployment or UBI discourages people from working and they just mail you a check without providing you have a job, maybe we don't need it anyways.  Most people are gonna want two yrs unemployment in March anyways and that wasn't allowed after 911

I don't feel bad for the expiration of Unemployment

It's Pelosi fault, she still say 2.2T or nothing 😭😭😭

People on unemployment buy necessities (groceries, rent or mortgage payments, fuel, medical care, utilities, gasoline, car payments if they still have them). They don't buy big-ticket items and they don't go on expensive trips. They certainly don't take out new mortgages or loans for home improvements that do much to drive a strong economy!

Many people may have gone from well-paying jobs, sort-of, to really poor-paying jobs (let us say wait staff at high-quality full-service restaurants to fast-food workers and retail sales clerks).

The demise of COVID-19 will bring a rapid return to normal (more Obama-like than Trump-like) economic conditions. 

[pbrower2a]

Joe Biden will be much less polarizing than Trump. I'm not going to say that the Trump base will like the result, but I can predict that Biden can trade some approval for desirable legislation that causes him to pick off some of what he loses in approval or favorability.

[pbrower2a]

I doubt Biden approval ratings will feel very important especially as he is unlikely to seek a second term.

The electoral map has been remarkably stable since 2000. At this point I expect a fairly close election. If Joe Biden is a one-term President, then he simply passes the baton with an endorsement.

He knows why he chose Kamala Harris to be VP. It was not to solidify the vote in California to pick up a shaky state. African-Americans were going to vote strongly D in 2020. It is not to reward someone as for "long and faithful service to the Democratic Party". She is an ex-DA, and she knows law... oh, does she know law. After Trump that is precious and will be for at least twelve years (hint, hint!) I doubt that she has any skeletons in her closet.

     

[pbrower2a]

He even got a larger percentage of the popular vote than Ronald Reagan did in 1980!

[pbrower2a]

Still here. Not much seems to be happening.  After all, it is what happens after the inauguration that really matters -- right? I remember going through some old newspapers from late in 1928, many of them showing unbridled optimism about the sure success in the Presidency of... Herbert Hoover. 

[pbrower2a]

In view of these high approval ratings for Joe Biden, I would conclude that Joe Biden has excellent political instincts and thinks things out well. He ran a very Reagan-like campaign despite having an  ideology very different from that of the Gipper. I think we will be saying "The adults are in charge again" within a few hours of his inauguration. That is how an effective Presidency starts.

[pbrower2a]

After the first month, he will be lower than Trump, and he’ll always remain below 50%...

95% of Republicans don’t like Biden, and something like 60% of Dems only voted for Biden because they didn’t like Trump). Even more polarized nation. Added to the divided government, Biden has no chance of any sort of Unity.

His approvals will reflect all of this.

The honeymoon will be over quickly as President Biden makes some choices that he must make. The difference between him and Trump is that Biden starts at a higher level. 

[pbrower2a]

If Biden trys to govern like a wishy washy 90s democrat then he will be in the low 40s but if he actually makes a case for his presidency and works to engage with his base then maybe high 40s wont be too bad.

That being said, I dont think people in the Biden era will obsess over approval rating like they did in the Trump era

He has much more room for error than did Donald Trump. The surest way to lose a re-election, other than outright incompetence is to buck a trend when first elected with that trend striking back. Carter may not have been a thoroughly awful President, but he was President when the Religious Right ballooned and quickly found him not Right enough.  Trump won despite demographic tendencies toward a more liberal political environment.

I remind you of what Nate Silver said of incumbents running for re-election: if their early support is 43.5% early in the electoral season (probably January or February) they have about a 50% chance of winning re-election with a competent and spirited campaign. This applies for both Parties and even in wave years. An exception is for appointed pols who never won the race to begin with and have yet to show that they could. A Tim Scott or a Tina Smith gets elected for the first time by having a campaign good enough for someone who won election the first time. Martha McSalley showed that she was not up to it.

Once legislating or governing an elected pol must make choices that will disappoint some of his voters. That's probably good enough to have an initial approval sink from 53 to 47 or so. That is not the end. One will need to campaign to get re-elected. Practically all politicians seeking re-election end up campaigning, as it is not mere habit or for the fun of it; it is necessary for getting re-elected.

Maybe it is not as simple as it seems. Still, Barack Obama got re-elected and Donald Trump didn't. Obama's weakest approval ratings were around 45%, which explains why he could get 51% of the popular vote in in 2012. Trump's approval ratings at a similar time were around 40%. That Obama seemed a better campaigner, less of a trouble-maker, a more coherent speaker, and a scandal-free administrator mattered less for getting re-elected for Obama than did starting the campaign season with about 5% stronger approval than that of Donald Trump.. who likewise parlayed about 40% approval into about 47% of the popular vote. 47% of the popular vote was enough to make the Electoral College fairly close, but it was not enough for a win of the Electoral College.

Obviously, performance matters, and so does some luck. Obviously most of us expect COVID-19 to exit the scene.,, and for some measure of economic rebound as people do again what they did before "Rona" started stalking us. Joe Biden seems to have good political instincts in contrast to Donald Trump, the current President having had no idea of how to be a politician at any level from city councilman to Governor, Senator, or Cabinet Secretary.           

[pbrower2a]

Trump Toupee and many Rs have been claiming this on the forum, many people will go from ICUs back to work when they get vaccinated and Trump didn't even order enough vaccines due to Trump letting his guard down on Covid and preparing for his relection.

Biden once we all get vaccinated will have 55% approvals.

Trump never had a 50% approval rating

Yes... vaccines are prevention and not treatment. The ICU is often a portal to the morgue. We are not all going to get the vaccine any earlier than we merit based upon our work, comorbidities, and exposure to the disease. (In the latter, that means that if you are taking care of someone with the virus you get a dose).

This vaccine is rushed, and I would rather wait a couple of months until it is well established as safe and effective. In the meantime I expect to take appropriate precautions. I will be tempted to use the words "negligent homicide" with the name of Donald Trump except if such is precluded by circumstances (such as if I go back to substitute school teaching).   

[pbrower2a]

Joe Biden did his job, and Trump muffed his.

Approvals for Pence, Romney, and McConnell soar.

[pbrower2a]

Do you have a source for the favorability polls, ideally numeric?

[pbrower2a]

These state numbers are suspicious. If true, it would be pretty bad at the beginning of a presidency. Biden underwater in states he easily carried? Color me skeptical.

Possible explanation (really a wild guess): the insurrection damaged all faith in government at all levels and in a bipartisan way -- although Trump's cult may still be convinced that Trump won, in a landslide nonetheless.   

[pbrower2a]

I wonder if any part of Trump now regrets running for president.  He’s mostly hated, his brand is maligned, he’s leaving office in extreme disgrace, and only a small handful of people like him.

Worse, the people who most believe him can do nothing for him. Trump has always had high-end clientele as his customers (except at his casinos... and that did not turn out well).

He was completely unsuited by his personality, learning, and experience to be President. He does not understand law or history. His interpersonal skills are weak. He had no experience in politics. Contrast Eisenhower, who at least was lobbying Congress for funds for defense against the Nazi menace, and had to deal with the military system of justice. Eisenhower had much respect for the law and well understood that one could not game the law in one's favor; it was simply there.    

[pbrower2a]

Anyone know when we will get some approval ratings? I’m getting impatient

Gallup? Likely early-to-mid February.

Morning Consult was fairly early to get fifty-state polls. There might be single-state polls fairly soon, especially in states in which a Senator (MO, TX) or high-profile Congressional Representative misbehaved (AZ, CO, TX).