Biden Has Lowest Approval in History, Should Still Win
A famed political forecaster doesn't believe the polls.
I found the juxtaposition of two stories at memeorandum this morning amusing but nonetheless think my headline is right.
Gallup (“Biden’s 13th-Quarter Approval Average Lowest Historically“):
President Joe Biden averaged 38.7% job approval during his recently completed 13th quarter in office, which began on Jan. 20 and ended April 19. None of the other nine presidents elected to their first term since Dwight Eisenhower had a lower 13th-quarter average than Biden.
Here’s the graphic:
Indeed, it’s not even all that close. That he’s eight points behind where Donald Trump was at the same juncture (which coincided with the COVID lockdowns!) is stunning.
George H.W. Bush had the previous low 13th-quarter average approval rating, at 41.8% in 1992. Donald Trump and Barack Obama, Biden’s immediate predecessors in office, averaged 46.8% and 45.9% job approval, respectively, at the same point in their presidencies.
Jimmy Carter is the only other president with a sub-50% average in his 13th quarter. Three of the four prior presidents who had 13th-quarter approval averages below 50% lost their reelection bids, with Obama the exception.
Four of the six presidents who were reelected — Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — averaged between 51% and 55% approval during their 13th quarters. Another, Dwight Eisenhower, had the highest average for a president at this stage of his presidency, 73.2%.
From a broader historical perspective, Biden’s most recent quarterly average ranks 277th out of 314 presidential quarters in Gallup records dating to 1945. That puts it in the bottom 12% of all presidential quarters.
As I’ve noted many times over the years, I’m dubious of comparisons with pre-Clinton presidencies. The nature of the political and information environments in the era of the Permanent Campaign is simply different than it was in the Before Times. But, again, Biden is underperforming even Trump, who was underwater (that is, more Americans disapproving than approving) all but the first few days of his presidency.
And, while the economy is demonstrably getting better, it doesn’t seem to be helping Biden.
The latest quarterly average for Biden is technically the lowest of his presidency to date, though not meaningfully different from the previous quarter’s 39.0%. After Biden averaged better than 50% approval during his first two quarters in office, his subsequent readings have been near 40%.
The juxtaposition comes from this: The Guardian (“‘A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose’: can Allan Lichtman predict the 2024 election?“). It’s a very long interview and worth reading in full for the backstory and humorous anecdotes. But I’ll limit the excerpts here to the pieces defending the headline thesis.
He has been called the Nostradamus of US presidential elections. Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the result of nine of the past 10 (and even the one that got away, in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore). But now he is gearing up for perhaps his greatest challenge: Joe Biden v Donald Trump II.
This is followed by a longish backstory on how he came, along with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, to develop and publish his “13 Keys” way back in 1981.
They came up with 13 true/false questions and a decision rule: if six or more keys went against the White House party, it would lose. If fewer than six went against it, it would win. These are the 13 keys, as summarised by AU’s website:
1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
This is followed by a lot of interesting anecdotal discussion about various predictions Lichtman made.
“When I first developed my system and made my predictions, the professional forecasters blasted me because I had committed the ultimate sin of prediction, the sin of subjectivity.
“Some of my keys were not just cut and dried and I kept telling them, it’s not subjectivity, it’s judgment. We’re dealing with human systems and historians make judgments all the time, and they’re not random judgments. I define each key very carefully in my [1988] book and I have a record.”
This is followed by lots more anecdotes, including a stubborn insistence that he got 2000 right.
Perhaps Lichtman’s most striking prophecy, defying polls, commentators and groupthink, was that Trump – a former reality TV star with no prior political or military experience – would pull off a wildly improbable win over the former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton in 2016. How did he know?
“The critical sixth key was the contest key: Bernie Sanders’s contest against Clinton. It was an open seat so you lost the incumbency key. The Democrats had done poorly in 2014 so you lost that key. There was no big domestic accomplishment following the Affordable Care Act in the previous term, and no big foreign policy splashy success following the killing of Bin Laden in the first term, so there were just enough keys. It was not an easy call.”
Now, Lichtman won’t formally make his prediction for this year’s election until August. But why is he so confident Biden will win the rematch?
As another election looms, he is not impressed by polls that show Trump leading Biden, prompting a fatalistic mood to take hold in Washington DC and foreign capitals.
“They’re mesmerised by the wrong things, which is the polls. First of all, polls six, seven months before an election have zero predictive value. They would have predicted President Michael Dukakis. They would have predicted President Jimmy Carter would have defeated Ronald Reagan, who won in a landslide; Carter was way ahead in some of the early polls.
“Not only are polls a snapshot but they are not predictors. They don’t predict anything and there’s no such thing as, ‘if the election were held today’. That’s a meaningless statement.”
He is likely to make his pronouncement on the 2024 presidential election in early August. He notes that Biden already has the incumbency key in his favour and, having crushed token challengers in the Democratic primary, has the contest key too. “That’s two keys off the top. That means six more keys would have to fall to predict his defeat. A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose.”
So, increasingly, I think that’s right. While Biden seemingly has zero momentum, he’s got a ton of cash on hand and a strong party apparatus. Trump is flat broke, has intentionally gutted the RNC, and is mired in several criminal and civil trials that occupy his time and drain his treasury.
Still, here’s the current 270toWin Electoral Map:
There are 12 possible combinations of states for a Trump win and only 9 for a Biden win. Rather than try to go through all of those combinations seven months out—I agree with Lichtman that it’s just too early, since most voters just aren’t paying attention—let’s just go through the “Keys.”
1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. Democrats had 235 seats in the 116th Congress, 222 in the 117th, and 213 in the 118th. TRUMP
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. BIDEN
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. BIDEN
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. UNKNOWN but leaning TRUMP. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is running and is currently showing a shockingly high 7-8 points in the polls that include him. I’m dubious that this lasts.
5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. BIDEN
6. Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. BIDEN
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. UNKNOWN but lean BIDEN. I simply don’t know how Lichtman scores “major changes.” In his Trump prediction for 2016, for example, he noted, “There was no big domestic accomplishment following the Affordable Care Act in the previous term, and no big foreign policy splashy success following the killing of Bin Laden in the first term.” Certainly, Biden has passed massive spending bills and, in my judgment, done a pretty good job managing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But are either of those comparable to the ACA or killing Bin Laden?
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. UNKNOWN but lean TRUMP. Again, this is a matter of definitions. Right now, there’s nothing on the same level as the Black Lives Matter protests or even the COVID lockdown rebellion. There are a lot of demonstrations over the Israel-Gaza war. Is that enough? Will it sustain itself through the election?
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. While my high school and Army friends on Facebook are consumed by every minor allegation against the President, he’s been remarkably scandal-free in my judgment. BIDEN.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. UNKNOWN but lean BIDEN. Obviously, the Afghanistan withdrawal was a short-term fiasco. But I’m skeptical voters will punish Biden for it almost four years later. And, while it could conceivably cost him Michigan’s 15 Electors, I don’t think we can consider the Gaza war a US policy failure.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. Conversely, unless we’re going to count the already-planned Afghanistan withdrawal as a “major success,” we really haven’t seen anything that would shift the election. TRUMP
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. I’m rather confident that he is not. TRUMP
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. He’s decidedly not a national hero! But he’s arguably quite charismatic. TRUMP
So, with the aforementioned hedges, I’d say the Keys give Biden a 7-6 edge. That’s too close for comfort.
Yet again, you have chosen not to mention how much of Biden’s historically-unprecedented unpopularity is the deliberately manufactured product of a concerted mass disinformation campaign across multiple media. Do you think that is unimportant, or do you deny that it’s true?
Don Snorleone/Rip Van Stinkle?
Possibly a depreciating asset. MAGA demonstrations at the Manhattan trial have been notably anemic.
@DrDaveT:
I will butt in to say unimportant. It exists regardless of why it exists.
@charontwo:
Causally unimportant, or unimportant in terms of what to do about it?
I should have been more clear — I was arguing that it explains why Biden’s ratings are so low, and why directly comparing his numbers against past presidents without correcting for that is an error in analysis.
The question of whether Democratic strategy could or should somehow respond to that climate is an interesting one, but not my intended topic today.
@charontwo:
It’s not one of the 13 keys, but I note, in the charisma context, that being the butt of successful jokes is never helpful, and the late night hosts are getting a lot of fodder from team Trump.
@DrDaveT:
All Democrats face biased press, I am saying there is nothing to correct for. HRC was not an incumbent, but have you forgotten the buttery males and the “clouds and shadows”/questions raised in the NYT re the Clinton Foundation, Uranium One etc.
@DrDaveT:
Mostly, like @charontwo, I think his numbers are his numbers. But, yes, I think the notion that Biden has somehow been uniquely targeted by a “mass disinformation campaign across multiple media” is vastly overblown. While the particulars are different, I think he’s basically in the same boat as George H.W. Bush: extremely competent and well-qualified administrators who would have been far more effective as Prime Ministers than as President, which demands a charisma and ability to connect with the mass public that both lack. What it genuinely baffles me that people don’t see through it, Trump is much better at this than is Biden.
Regardless, I don’t want to derail the thread into whining about “the media.” The President has a vast array of people, paid for by the US taxpayer, whose job it is to manage his communications.
The future cannot be predicted. Some wild cards:
1) Rate of inflation worsens.
2) Protesters descend on Chicago and cause enough mayhem to throw the election to Trump. See: 1968.
3) Health emergency for either Biden or Trump.
4) SCOTUS fails to stop January 6 trial and it goes forward.
5) Domestic terrorism, either MAGA or foreign, or foreign-inspired.
6) Foreign crisis: North Korea, Taiwan.
7) Health crisis: avian flu jumps to humans, a new Covid variant, etc…
8) Hackers obtain tape of Trump backstage at The Apprentice.
9) One or both suffer catastrophic public failures in speech due to mental decline.
10) Evidence surfaces that Trump’s stolen documents ended up in Russia.
That’s ten. I could do more. But the point is, only a fool imagines he can predict the future.
@Michael Reynolds:
Really? Even your dog or your cat can, that is one of the main points of evolution, especially for predator species (like people). It’s part of “social intelligence” predicting the behavior of others.
@charontwo: Yup. Not social, but I’m an engineer. I got paid to predict the future.
@Michael Reynolds: Just to be randomly argumentative, aside from the health issues, and Trump’s trial, each of those can be mapped to one of the magical keys.
I expect it hadn’t occurred to the key creators to consider an election between two ancient men who could drop dead at any moment. Or that the challenger would be embroiled in legal picadillos resulting from trying to subvert the will of the voters in the last election.
I would posit that this is more of a framework to organize thoughts about the present, rather than to mechanically churn through, score them up and ignore anything that doesn’t fit, despite how Dr. Joyner immediately used it.
It’s a tool. Probably a tool used to generate papers and articles and media experiences rather than make accurate predictions, but even if used to make predictions, I would expect the designers to be looking at the shortcomings of the tool.
@charontwo: You do yourself no favors by ignoring the very obvious truth — Trump is incredibly charismatic to a large swath of voters.
I get the impulse to deny it — he comes across as amazingly unpleasant to me — but the effects of this charisma are right there at every rally, and in every interaction you might unfortunately have with the maga crowd.
I think of it like dark matter. I can’t see it, I kind of suspect that it isn’t really there, but there are enough observable effects that either it exists, something very much like it exists, or we have a fundamental misunderstanding of the universe and are asking the wrong questions.
@charontwo: @gVOR10:
“A leopard might eat my face,” is an extrapolation based on observed behavior, but since 90% of the time the leopard does not in fact eat your face, it proves my point. You can assess probabilities, but in a situation with this many variables, that is essentially useless. Go ahead and predict the next Superbowl. You can guess, you can even make an informed guess, but you won’t bet your house on it because: only a fool imagines he can predict the future.
Imagine a horse race. It’s Secretariat versus a field of plow horses. Secretariat will absolutely win. . . unless he doesn’t because of a long list of possibilities.
I live in Las Vegas, a city with 175 casinos, each built with funds supplied by people who thought they could predict the future.
DNA, Environment, Free Will and the one all right-thinking Americans ignore: Random Chance. The American order would go: Free Will, Environment, DNA (grudgingly) and no randomness. DNA and randomness lack the moral component Americans love. You can’t condemn or punish genes or random events. Sometimes shit happens.
My order would be all four forces in a floating Venn diagram, each element affected by the other three, based on personal experience as well as logic. Penniless high school drop-out, thief, fugitive becomes. . . what? Would you have predicted successful, happily-married children’s book author? Me neither. But let’s not make it about me, I am an outlier. How about 15 year-old Pakistani girl is shot in the head and. . . Nobel Prize? I could play that game all day.
I don’t get the confidence. Yeah, I can see Biden’s path. Yeah, approval rating no longer seem to be a reliable predictor voting behavior. And yes, Biden will have the most well-funded, well-resourced campaign ever.
But it is way too early to write-off Drowsy Don. He definitely has a plausible path too despite his faltering campaign.
@DrDaveT: I would agree about the disinformation campaign but note that the fact that it is disinformation does not alter the affect on the ground. If the lies stick, the fact that they are lies is only tragic.
Without seeing the breakdown, I’m willing to bet Biden’s approval among Republicans is lower than Lardass’ approval ever was among Democrats.
If so, this would explain matters all too well.
Rhetoric does matter. Decades of calling Democrats socialists, the enemy, etc. do have an effect. Add the Lardass years and the stollen election and hardening of attitudes, and even among Republicans who otherwise seem sane and reasonable, you get the opinion that Lardass is a danger to the country and the planet, but Biden is worse.
Trump’s rallies are not still drawing the kind of crowds they previously did.
@DK:
It is also too early for the defeatist attitude we see among lots of left-leaning people.
@Gustopher:
The nature of his support is evolving though. He is more popular than ever with Christian Nationalists, incels, TERFS and other culture war zealots, less so with the remainder of the GOP and its leaners.
@Gustopher:
There are two groups of Trumpkins who find The Dotard charismatic:
1. Those who acknowledge that he’s a stupid, vulgar, cruel sadistic buffoon who’s astonishingly ignorant of the most basic facts about history, politics, science, medicine, literature, art, etc., yet claims to be the world’s expert in those fields, and adore him precisely because he’s scum.
2. Those who purport to believe that Trump is a brilliant businessman, a devout Christian, a devoted husband, a loving father, and the best president we’ve ever had.
@DK:
I remain optimistic that there will be presidential debates, and that Trump will scare away all the Republican-leaning but decent people when asked “who won the 2020 campaign?” Or better, when he reacts when Biden is asked that question.
People who don’t follow politics much don’t really keep up with his lunacy. Alternately, it will have no effect, and we will be forced to concede that Putin is right and democracy doesn’t work.
Related: Could Pete Buttigieg grown a Stalin mustache? I think he could. Not sure he can set up the re-education camps or whatever else we would need, but I think he can do the mustache.
@Gustopher:
Maybe. But Putin’s autocracy ain’t exactly doin’ numbers either.
In this case, it would mean Americans just don’t work. It’s not like every democracy is electing a rapist career criminal.
@Gustopher:
He is. But that swath is not growing any larger, and even if it would be possible to expand it, Trump is not even attempting to do so. He has who he has, and they’re all he will have in November, and he may not even have all of them at that point.
@DK:
Surely that’s just an issue of the autocrat.
Secretary Pete of the Grand Revolutionary Democratic Party of Socialism, Unicorns And Mandatory Queerness* has no territorial ambitions.
Not sure why the queerness has to be mandatory, but I just get the Queer Agenda newsletters, I’m not in a decision making role.
*: Pro-tip to our cishet friends: just register as bisexual in the Great Sexual Census. Nearly impossible to prove you aren’t, especially since there are a lot of men who are bi as in “attracted to nearly every woman, and 8 twinks.” We can help you find some believable twinks if you get picked for the long-form census survey. In a pinch, just say David Tennant was your awakening, and the census worker will probably nod knowingly.
How the Trump trial is playing in MAGA world: sublime indifference, collective shrug
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/27/trump-hush-money-trial-maga-base
The gripping hand here is that Trump doesn’t *have* to win the election. He can lose by 5 points and still win the EC. So most of the prediction models, including Lichtman’s, are moot.
Everyone who thought Kristi Noem’s political future would come down to, “Where’s Cricket?” raise your hand. And she put it in print. Deliberately. No one can predict the future.
Imagine the frenzy in Colin Jost’s writers room, just hours before the correspondent’s dinner.
@Michael Reynolds:
A friend commented that her ghost writer must hate her, otherwise they would have said, “Um … maybe we don’t talk about this?”
It’s almost refreshing to see everyone on the political spectrum — from crazy-right MAGA fiends to hard left commies — unite to dump on one individual. Gives me a brief flicker of optimism for this country.
@Michael Reynolds:
Given that Trump loathes dogs, he might find Noem’s caninicide a feature, not a bug.
@Hal_10000:
Or at least “maybe don’t say you hated the dog so you killed it?”
@James Joyner:
You are waaaaay too intelligent and observant to actually believe this. WTF? Seriously? What role did Russia have in GHW’s loss? What role did Rupert Murdoch, or Fox News, have? What actual lies about GHW were being propagated on social media at the time? (Hint: there were no social media at the time.)
James… wake up!
@DrDaveT: While I think we should do everything in our power to combat the malign influence of foreign misinformation campaigns, especially from China and Russia, I think their actual impact on people’s view of Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who have been major factors for decades, is modest at best. Fox News and social media are slightly more powerful, but their audiences are basically just getting self-reinforcing information.