With a New York Times/Siena poll showing Joe Biden’s approval rating at a jaw-dropping 33 percent approval and 60 percent disapproval, Biden has crossed another new frontier in the RealClearPolitics poll average: For the first time, his approval rating is more than 20 points below his disapproval:
This is a fiasco that can in no way be spun. Donald Trump only hit approval ratings this bad for a few days in December 2017, on the way to losing the House in 2018, the presidency in 2020, and the Senate in 2021. Biden’s approval rating of 37.4 percent is lower than Trump’s immediately after January 6. Meanwhile, the “country is on the wrong track” poll numbers are the worst they have been in the past 13 years, worse than at any point during the global pandemic. Even a plague was a more optimistic time than life under Joe Biden.
The Times poll has the usual parade of horribles: Biden’s approval-disapproval is 25–68 with independents, 32–63 with Hispanics, 35–58 with women, 19–69 with 18–29 year olds, and 20–75 with non-college whites. The only whisper of hope is that the poll shows Biden up 44–41 if Republicans were insane enough to renominate Donald Trump.
This has to finally force into the open the debate over whether Democrats are really going to renominate this man. More immediately: Will Democratic candidates openly distance themselves from him and his policies on the campaign trail? Biden cannot be reelected without significant improvement, which, among other things, will require him to stop getting older. The lowest popular-vote percentages for an incumbent in the popular vote era (since 1828), with the electoral college outcomes:
1912: William Howard Taft, 23.2 percent (lost 435–8, with 88 electoral votes for Teddy Roosevelt, who got 27 percent of the vote)
1992: George H. W. Bush, 37.5 percent (lost 370–168; Ross Perot got 19 percent of the vote)
1932: Herbert Hoover, 39.7 percent (lost 472–59)
1980: Jimmy Carter, 41.0 percent (lost 489–49; John Anderson got 6.6 percent of the vote)
1892: Benjamin Harrison, 43.0 percent (lost 277–145, with 22 electoral votes for James Weaver, who got 8.5 percent of the vote)
1828: John Quincy Adams, 43.7 percent (lost 178-83)
Bill Clinton (49.2 percent in 1996) and Woodrow Wilson (49.3 percent in 1916) are the only incumbents in American history to be reelected without a majority of the popular vote. Even Trump can’t get Biden past that bar a second time. And if Biden can’t find a way to get Trump nominated again, Democrats face the abyss.