Biden faces doubt from some voters who backed Dems in 2022
Hillary Scholten is among the Democrats who had a surprisingly good election night in November. She became the first Democrat in nearly a half century to win her western Michigan congressional district, bucking expectations about her party’s prospects and helping limit the Republican majority in the U.S. House to just four seats. As President Joe Biden prepares for a coming reelection bid, victories like this have bolstered him and his supporters who believe voters rewarded his steady leadership during a period of economic and political turmoil.
But Scholten, who declined in an interview to outright endorse Biden for reelection, suggested that while the president has accomplished a tremendous amount, he wasn’t the reason for her victory. She won, she insisted, by appealing to voters as someone “focused on putting the people of their district first over national politics.”
That approach tapped into an apparent openness among voters to support Democratic candidates in the midterms even if they weren’t necessarily fond of Biden, a discernment that is notable at a time when politics has become increasingly nationalized. Roughly 1 in 6 voters for Democratic House candidates said they disapproved of Biden’s job performance, according to AP Votecast, an extensive nationwide survey of the electorate. Two-thirds of these voters said Biden was not a factor, good or bad, in their midterm decisions.
The findings are a warning sign for both parties at the outset of the 2024 presidential campaign. For Republicans, a constant stream of attacks on Biden may have little effect on voters who will accept him over GOP contenders seen as too extreme. But for Biden, the findings also suggest that the surprisingly strong Democratic performance last year might not translate into energy around his reelection.
“We certainly have a problem as a party if individuals have such low satisfaction with the leader of our party,” said Scholten, who also noted she would welcome a competitive Democratic primary, an unlikely prospect for now.
In Michigan and beyond, Votecast shows that about three-quarters of the midterm voters who backed Democrats but disapproved of Biden were self-identified Democrats or Democraticleaning independents. Most said party affiliation was not very important to them.
This group was more likely than those who approved of Biden to be sour about the economy, the issue that ranked top among them, and blame the president for inflation. They were overwhelmingly pessimistic about the country’s direction. The cohort was younger, more ideologically moderate and from lower-income households.