HOW LOW CAN JOE GO? Remember just a few weeks ago, when President Joe Biden’s supporters hoped he would enjoy a bounce in job approval ratings after his State of the Union address? They scoured each new poll for evidence of even a tiny uptick. A couple of polls appeared to show just a little improvement — maybe it was happening! — and then Biden settled back down into approval ratings in the low 40% range.
Until now. In the last three polls in the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Biden’s job approval rating is 40%, 38%, and 35%. A few optimistic outliers, one poll from the Economist showed a job approval of 46%, are keeping Biden at his current average of 40.4%. But the president’s trend, again, seems downward.
That has sent some Democrats into a new round of panic, fearing that a presidential job approval rating in the high 30s would surely mean a Republican House and Senate in this November’s midterm elections. Biden could bring his whole party crashing down around his shoulders.
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And we might not have seen the worst yet. Look at the Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center, maintained by the Gallup polling organization. It compiles the Gallup ratings of each president throughout his administration going back to Harry Truman. Biden is lower than most, but all have hit low spots.
Donald Trump hit 36% in the Gallup poll in December 2017 and 34% on the way out after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Barack Obama hit 40% a few times in 2011.
With the war in Iraq going disastrously and then with economic collapse at home, George W. Bush fell below 30% in July 2007 and then hit his low of 25% in October 2008. That’s so low it’s reminiscent of the old John McCain saying that he had become so unpopular his only supporters were “paid staff and blood relatives.”
Bill Clinton hit 37% in June of 1993 during his tumultuous first year in office. George H.W. Bush hit 29% in July 1992 amid a recession. Ronald Reagan hit 35% in January 1983, again in recession. Jimmy Carter hit 28% in July 1979, when everything was going wrong.
And so on. Presidents hit low spots. And several of them suffered big midterm election losses. Now, Biden has joined the group. The question now is: How low can Joe go?
I asked three sharp Republican pollsters and political consultants: David Winston, Curt Anderson, and Dave Carney. The takeaway from all three is that it appears the majority coalition that elected Biden has fallen apart. And that is terrible news for both the president and his party.
“While there are a lot of groups that have become more disapproving of Biden’s job performance, Independents are at a remarkable level of disapproval,” Winston said in an email exchange. “In The Economist/YouGov survey (April 9-12), Independents disapproved by a 30-60 margin; the Politico/Morning Consult survey (April 8-11) was a similar 30-62; and the Quinnipiac survey (April 7-011) was 26-56. So among a group Biden won by 13 points in 2020, after Clinton lost them by four in 2016, his disapproval is 30 points or more higher than his approval. This means the majority coalition that elected him is now not in place. Regaining it will be difficult, given his current poor job approval performances on the economy and other issues.”
Carney and Anderson had different thoughts on whether Biden has hit the bottom, or nearly so, or can plunge further. “There is no limit or floor to a president’s approval rating, but historically, Nixon’s 24 percent in January 1974 seems like the practical floor for a modern-day president,” Carney said in another email exchange. “Biden has the potential to sink into the high 20s before the midterm elections, considering inflation will be raging by then. Wholesale prices were up over 11 percent last month, an early warning sign for a CPI increase this month and beyond. Vulnerable Democrats are already jumping ship, and other rats will soon follow suit. We have seen the best Biden has to offer, and voters have been left wanting.”
“As long as he doesn’t commit a crime, Biden has almost reached the mathematical floor,” Anderson said by email. “He could possibly drop a couple more points, but it doesn’t matter. His ship already has more holes than can be patched. The Democrats held out some hope months ago that inflation would be ‘transitory’ — whatever that means — but the economy is clearly not going to rebound to save the Democrats in November.”
A serious Biden liability, Anderson said, is dwindling support on his own team. “Biden has managed to get down to about a 40 percent job approval rating with likely voters,” Anderson noted, “which is really astounding in today’s partisan climate where both teams put their jerseys on and disregard anything the other side says. Republicans and Independents give him low marks, but now he’s even getting a failing grade from some Democrats.” How has Biden managed to pull that off? “He is badly out of phase with the voters ideologically, he has demonstrated gross incompetence on Afghanistan and the economy, and voters have real questions about his capacity,” Anderson said. “It’s just a deadly combination that is unprecedented.”
So how low can Joe go? Each expert has some good points. It certainly seems hard to believe Biden could fall to the level of Nixon in Watergate or George W. Bush in Iraq and the financial collapse. But there is still a ways to go before Biden gets in that territory. Why couldn’t he fall into the mid or even low 30s? If Democrats had an emotional attachment to him, like they had for Obama, that would not be possible. But they don’t, and independents, not to mention Republicans, don’t either. What we’re seeing in the polls is pure, unemotional voter opinion on the president’s job performance. And for Joe Biden, that is a very bad thing.
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