If you consider his approval rating on any given day relative to where it was two weeks prior, you can see the recent downturn. On Thursday, his approval rating was about 5.6 percent lower than it had been two weeks prior, the biggest two-week change of his presidency — and downward.
This is the point where one might expect a writer such as myself to begin opining about Biden’s political position or about the long-term effects of a drop in Biden’s approval. And don’t worry, we’ll get to some of that. But let’s first step back a bit and look at the big picture.
Since late 2009, presidential approval ratings have fit a consistent pattern. Members of the president’s party really like him and members of the opposing party really don’t. That has left approval ratings operating within a very narrow range, like a tug-of-war contest between two very strong teams. There’s also a group near the middle of the rope — the independents — who are pulling in both directions. Often, that group is pulling on net against the president’s party, so we end up with approval ratings that consistently hover near the 50 percent mark or a bit below. (Biden’s been under 50 percent for the past two weeks in the FiveThirtyEight average.)
What this means is one of two things: either approval ratings are less useful at evaluating what affects Americans’ views of the president or not much actually changes those views. The distinction between those possibilities is subtle; the former is a criticism of the tool and the latter of the electorate. I tend to think that the latter gets closer to the truth. But from a functional standpoint, the difference doesn’t matter much. Pretty much no matter what happens, approval ratings haven’t moved that much in the past 12 years.
That doesn’t mean that no movement is happening in the polls. For example, we often see movement in degree of approval.
Consider YouGov’s polling for the Economist. Every two weeks, the firm releases new results, breaking down Biden’s approval into four categories: strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove and strongly disapprove. Here’s what’s happened with those values over the course of the year.
A few things to notice. The first is that the pattern at left, of overall approval (strongly approve plus somewhat approve) fits the tug-of-war analogy well: Democrats tugging at one extreme and Republicans at the other with independents in the middle.
What you probably noticed first, though was the plunge in strong support from Democrats. That’s exacerbated by the shift in the vertical axis, certainly, but it’s still a big drop. Here, we may be seeing a bit of tradition, as presidents have historically enjoyed honeymoon periods at the beginning of their presidencies in which their approval ratings are inflated. Some of that may be playing a role here.
But notice that other vertical line on the chart. Know what that is? It’s June 21, the date of one of YouGov’s polls. (The polls are actually fielded over a longer period of time but I’ve assigned them to the overall date YouGov uses.) Not sure why June 21 is important? Here’s a hint.
Shortly after June 21, Biden’s overall approval began to drop. At about that same point, views of how he was handling the coronavirus pandemic began dropping even faster.
June 21 is the day the number of confirmed cases in the United States began climbing again. So, since late June, views of Biden’s handling of the pandemic have sagged as cases have risen. Along with that, his overall approval rating has declined.
In the most recent YouGov poll, the pollsters asked people how they viewed Biden’s handling of Afghanistan. Compared with mid-April, when Biden first announced his plan to remove U.S. troops from that country by Sept. 11, YouGov’s new poll has approval of Biden’s handling of Afghanistan down eight points overall, including nine points with independents. Only a third of the country approved of how he was handling the situation. And that was before the attack in Kabul on Thursday.
The polls in FiveThirtyEight’s average were also conducted before that attack, so the drop that accelerated in August is not a function of that attack. It may overlap with the collapse of the government in that country; it may also be a function of the polls that are included in the recent average. (The cyclical nature of the two-week shift shown above is in part because of the calendar on which different pollsters release new results.) It may be a lasting shift downward and one that hasn’t ended.
However you feel about horse race politics, that matters. You may not be worried about what Biden’s approval ratings say about the midterms, but I assure you that candidates who will be on the ballot do. If you’re a moderate Democrat looking to be reelected in a purple district, a drop in Biden’s approval rating means you may feel compelled to start using that as your lens for making decisions about how you vote on legislation.
Presidential approval ratings also offer an insight into how the midterms will turn out. If Biden’s hold is where it is, history suggests the Democrats could lose 30 seats — far more than would be needed to lose their majority.
But it’s also true that we can’t really anticipate how Biden’s approval rating will move. The flag on the middle of the tug-of-war rope may have shifted as much as it’s going to. Something else could emerge shortly that reverses Biden’s recent fortunes, such as a decline in the number of new coronavirus infections. It’s hard to say.
Take it from one of the people primarily responsible for Joe Biden being elected vice president in 2008:
What we know is that Biden’s approval rating has significant implications for how his party responds to him and as a predictive tool. We know, too, that it’s unlikely to move too much up or down, just given the past pattern of structural immobility it has demonstrated. What we don’t know, though, is if that relatively young rule will continue to hold — one way or the other.
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Analysis | What's happening with Biden's approval and why it matters - The Washington Post
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