Independent nation
Democrats are rightly worried about President Joe Biden’s poor job approval ratings. A closer look at his ratings among independents shows Democrats should be even more worried than they are.
Biden’s overall job approval ratings are bad enough. Only 45.1 percent of Americans approve of his performance per Monday’s RealClearPolitics average; 47.9 percent disapprove. That alone makes Biden less popular at this stage of his presidency than any president in the past 40 years except for Donald Trump.
Among independents, however, Biden is about as unpopular as Trump was at this stage in his presidency. An average of 39 percent of independents approved of Biden’s performance in the three polls taken between Sept.
18 and 26 that made data available for those voters; 52 percent disapproved.
This symmetry continues even if we include other polls that were worse for each president. Biden’s net job approval among independents in the most recent Economist/YouGov poll, which was taken between Sept. 26 and 28, dropped from minus-15 in the prior week to minus-22.
If we replace the previous Economist/YouGov poll with this new data, Biden’s net approval among independents drops to minus-15. Similarly, if we add a Quinnipiac poll from Sept. 21 to 26, 2017, to Trump’s average, his net job approval rating with independents drops to minus-16.
Now consider the context of the Trump polls: They were taken five weeks after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., where neoNazis and white supremacists shocked the nation’s conscience. Controversial Trump adviser Stephen Bannon had been fired one month before the polls. Emails from former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that detailed how the disgraced adviser had sought to set up meetings with a Russian billionaire close to President Vladimir Putin were reported days beforehand, and then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign was gaining steam.
The fact that Biden is now as unpopular among independents as Trump was then shows how truly politically damaged Biden is right now and should set off fire alarms in every Democratic campaign office.
Biden’s continued strong support among Democrats likely will not translate into congressional victories. Democrats are largely concentrated in a few states such as New York and California. This means that Democrats in swing states, such as Arizona and Wisconsin, and swing House districts outside major metropolitan areas should expect baseline support for Biden to be much lower than it is nationwide.
Biden’s abysmal standing with independents spells disaster for Democrats in the midterm elections if it does not substantially improve. Virtually all Senate and House candidates in 2018 and 2020 received vote shares closely resembling Trump’s job approval in their jurisdiction.
Maine’s longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins was the only GOP Senate candidate to receive a higher share of the vote than Trump’s job approval as registered in each state’s exit poll. If the same pattern emerges in 2022, Biden’s current showing means Democrats will lose almost every seriously contested Senate seat next year, giving Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky solid control of that chamber.
Redistricting complicates the House picture, but Democrats should expect to lose more than 20 seats and likely more than 30 on the current dismal data.
Progressives who say it’s more important to energize the base for the midterms are wrong. Democrats’ 2018 wave was fueled much more because they won independents by 12 points than by turning out more Democrats.
The Republican 63-seat House pickup in 2010 was also fueled primarily by independents; the GOP won this demographic by a whopping 19 points that year. Tea Party activists claimed the credit for the win, much as progressive women’s and youth groups garnered accolades for 2018, but in each case, it was the quiet independent voters who made the difference.
Biden won independents by 13 points in 2020. To go from plus-13 to minus-13 in less than a year is an epic disaster. Republicans are standing by, ready to pick up the pieces from a crumbling presidency.