Continuing pandemic saps Biden’s numbers
Approval ratings on his handling of virus, once over 80%, have sunk in recent weeks.
WASHINGTON — In his inaugural address, President Biden pledged that the U.S. would “overcome this deadly virus.”
Not quite 11 months later, the country appears, instead, to be reaching an uneasy truce with COVID-19, one that has left many Americans resigned and disappointed.
As the world moves into the second winter of the pandemic, uncertain over the impact of the new Omicron variant, that disappointment appears to be a key factor holding down Biden’s approval ratings.
Some of the problems Biden faces lies outside his control: No major country has been immune to the wave of illness the Delta variant of the coronavirus caused in the summer and fall. And Biden’s defenders correctly say that some Republican leaders have provided rhetorical cover for the vaccine resistance that has allowed the virus to flourish in many GOP-majority regions.
But the administration’s own actions have also played a role. For the first four months of his administration, Biden and his top aides had a clear goal — get Americans vaccinated. Since then, their focus has often seemed elsewhere, and for that, they’ve paid a political price.
Six months ago, with the vaccine rollout proceeding smoothly and case numbers falling, Biden and his aides could envision a decisive victory.
“Thanks to our heroic vaccine effort, we’ve gained the upper hand against this virus,” Biden declared at a White House ceremony on July 4.
The public was of a similar mind. Polls showed that concern about the virus had dropped to the lowest point since widespread illness began more than a year earlier.
Even as Biden spoke, however, the Delta variant had begun to undermine his claims. Simultaneously, the vaccine rollout was running into the hard reality of determined resistance from
about one-seventh of the adult population.
Over the summer, the Delta wave mounted, public concern about the virus rose, and approval of Biden fell.
In recent weeks, polls have shown public sentiment shifting again.
Polling by Ipsos for the Axios news site found a significant increase last month in the numbers of Americans who viewed common activities as low- risk. Significant majorities rated as low-risk activities including gathering with friends and family (61%), eating out (59%) or going shopping (63%). On each, the numbers represented a large change since the peak of the Delta wave.
Similarly, polling by Morning Consult found a substantial drop in the share of Americans who see the coronavirus as a “severe health risk” in their communities. The number, about 1 in 4 Americans, is now back roughly to where it was in mid-June.
So far, the Omicron variant does not seem to have changed people’s minds.
The problem for Biden is that there’s been no corresponding rebound in the public’s view of how he’s doing
his job. Indeed, ratings of how Biden has handled the virus — his strongest point since his administration’s earliest days — have deteriorated.
Polling by Navigator Research, a Democratic firm, shows voters approve of his handling of the virus 51% to 46%. That’s better than his ratings on other topics, but it’s down a lot from earlier this year. In late June, for example, 64% of voters approved. And some other polls have shown a steeper decline, with Biden in negative territory on the issue.
If greater concern over the virus sent Biden’s ratings plunging, why hasn’t that turned around as voters’ concerns have lessened?
Polling can’t definitively answer that question. But one strong possibility is that in May and June, Americans believed we were on our way toward beating the virus and were inclined to give the new administration credit. Now, by contrast, more and more people are simply making the best of a bad situation.
Back in June and July, “it really seemed like, wow, maybe we were going to end this pandemic,” said Liz Hamel, director of survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has
polled extensively on public attitudes toward the pandemic. “Now, people have been through that hope, which turned out to be a false hope,” she said. “They’ve seen this movie before.”
Kaiser’s polling shows a significant increase since the start of the year in the number of Americans who say they’re “frustrated” by the pandemic and a decline in the share who call themselves “optimistic.”
A survey conducted last month by Quinnipiac University showed a similar trend. Asked to choose a word that described best how they felt about the coronavirus, 62%, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents, picked “disappointed.”
In the same survey, 81% of Americans said they did not expect the country to return to normal for at least a year, and 58% said they did not expect normal times even then.
That lack of normality shows up as an especially salient concern among Democratic voters, noted Simon Rosenberg, a longtime Democratic strategist who heads NDN, a Washingtonbased think tank and advocacy group.
Asked about their issue priorities, Republicans ranked COVID-19 way down the scale, Navigator’s surveys show. But the pandemic remains the No. 1 or No. 2 priority for Democrats, according to the polling.
That difference in priorities highlights one of the continuing paradoxes of the pandemic:
In recent months, COVID-19 deaths have been concentrated in heavily Republican counties with low vaccination rates. In California last week, for example, Lassen County, with just 26% of its population vaccinated, and Plumas, with 53%, have the two highest COVID-19 death tolls per capita. Marin County, with more than 80% of its residents vaccinated, had no reported deaths.
And yet, concern over the virus remains much higher among Democrats. In Morning Consult’s polling, roughly 1 in 3 Democrats called the risk in their communities “severe,” while roughly 1 in 8 Republicans did.
Republicans have made opposition to mask and vaccine mandates a key party position — pushing a largely symbolic vote in the Senate last week, for example, to overturn the administration’s requirement that employers with 100 or more workers require either vaccinations or weekly testing.
Other Republicans have gone further, attacking officials such as Anthony Fauci, Biden’s top advisor on the virus, accusing the administration of hyping the risk and, in states including Florida, appointing officials who are openly skeptical of vaccines.
At the White House, by contrast, the virus has gotten significantly less public attention this fall than in the spring, despite the continued high priority it receives from Democratic voters.
Some of that shift in emphasis may have been unavoidable. In August, for example, Biden had little choice but to focus on efforts to evacuate Americans and their allies from Afghanistan after the Taliban conquest of the country.
But some of the shift was a choice. Biden has devoted a lot of public attention to touting the bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed this fall. He and his top aides have also spent countless hours on the legislative negotiations aimed at winning passage of his Build Back Better plan, which the Senate might vote on this month.
Those are both important administration priorities, but the focus on them has come at a cost: Biden has held significantly fewer public events this fall focused on the pandemic than he did in the spring. And over that same period, voters, including Democrats, have begun to sour on his handling of the issue.
In Morning Consult’s most recent polling, for example, 64% of Democrats approved of Biden’s handling of the virus, compared with 83% back when he delivered that triumphant White House speech.
Any weakness on handling the pandemic poses a huge challenge for Biden, said Rosenberg.
“COVID is still the dominant, central issue of our politics,” he said. “The country has been through a trauma. Biden was elected to get us to the other side of that trauma.”
“By spring, if people feel that we’re there, Democrats will be competitive,” he said. “If they don’t, it’s going to be very difficult for us.”