Just what is Joe Biden’s polling floor? More and more polls put Biden’s approval ratings into the 30s, and now we have a new entrant to that club. For the first time, Biden’s job approval sunk below 40% in Morning Consult’s regular tracking, and his disapproval hit a new high at the same time:
NEW: We just clocked Joe Biden’s worst approval rating yet.
Biden’s latest numbers are worse Trump’s were at this time four years ago – and instead mirror ’45’s standing in June 2020, amid COVID-19 and summer #BLM protests. https://t.co/n0rhjURD1d pic.twitter.com/HfMInDTD2F
— Eli Yokley (@eyokley) June 8, 2022
The latest survey found that 58% of voters disapprove of Biden’s job performance and 39% approve. It marks the 46th president’s lowest approval rating and highest disapproval rating in 62 weekly surveys conducted since he took office in January 2021.
For comparison, Biden’s latest numbers are worse than Donald Trump’s were at this time four years ago, when 45% approved and 52% disapproved of the former president. Biden’s popularity, or lack thereof, mirrors Trump’s standing in June 2020, when the nation was grappling with the twin crises of the pandemic and the response to the murder of George Floyd.
As always, there is a big partisan gap on this question, but it’s not what one would expect. Morning Consult hasn’t released the crosstabs as of the time this post was written, but they offer this look at the partisan demos on Biden’s job approval. He’s only impressing a little over a third of his own voters at the moment:
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Republicans are far more strident in their disdain for Biden than Democrats are in their support: 80% of GOP voters “strongly disapprove” of Biden’s job handling, compared with 37% of Democrats who “strongly approve” of it.
Interestingly, the survey also shows that the generic ballot question is a jump ball at 42/42. If that seems a bit counterintuitive, Morning Consult’s Eli Yokley tries to explain it as a function of Democrat voter compartmentalization of Biden. “An aversion to Biden,” Yokley writes, “doesn’t necessarily mean a vote against the Democratic Party in November.” Perhaps, but the results of primaries in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and now California strongly suggest that Biden’s holding down voter enthusiasm in the party, and likely leading to a large number of defections.
But is that a reasonable conclusion from this poll? The actual data shows that only 14% those who disapprove of Biden plan to vote for a Democrat in the midterms, while 70% of those who disapprove will vote for a Republican. With Biden’s disapproval at 58% of this sample, that’s going to include a significant number of Democrat voters, and likely a large number of independents too. (Also, let’s remember that Democrats really need more like a +5 on the generic ballot to compete in midterm House elections, thanks to historically consistent structural issues in apportionment.) And how many of the voters who are unhappy with Biden and Democrats will actually show up at all?
Let’s get back to the issue of Biden’s floor. Some might be inclined to see his decline into the thirties as an outlier, but his RCP average today nearly has Biden below 40% already:
Biden’s getting back out to the gap he had in mid-January. He broke the 40% plane briefly in early February and got down to 40.0% a week ago, but his disapproval numbers are ticking up more now, too. Morning Consult is part of this average, but it may also be a leading indicator as to what we can expect coming from other pollsters. And from the results we’re getting in primaries, Democrats can expect to continue to see their fortunes slide right along with Biden’s.
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