For those who want to see Joe Biden win in 2024 (or really just want to see Donald Trump lose), there’s bad news and good news.
The bad news is that in the modern era of polling, no president has won reelection with approval ratings this low at this point in his first term. For very obvious reasons, a sitting president usually needs to win at least close to 50% approval rating by Election Day to win. Despite the improving economy, Biden’s approval rating remains stubbornly low, averaging around 40% in polls. Reaching 50% looks like a lot.
The good news is that the number of approvals may not matter.
You may have noticed that many of the old rules of politics are past their expiration date. It is important to note that none of these were “iron rules” so much as rules of thumb. Still, it’s a bad time to rely on these rules of thumb.
The truism that “When Ohio goes, so goes the country” — that Ohio always backs the winner — didn’t hold true in 2020. The belief that politics was all about fundraising and that donors had great influence in choosing winners remained widespread. , hasn’t been true for quite some time. Just ask Michael Bloomberg or Ron DeSantis. From 1888 to 1996, the Electoral College vote followed the popular vote. That didn’t happen in 2000 and 2016.
For decades, candidates for president and Congress have followed the rule of swinging toward home base in the primaries and back to the center in the general election. Barack Obama largely ignored that rule, and Donald Trump actually flouted it spectacularly.
This points to one reason why approval ratings are no longer as important as they once were. In a polarized electorate, most voters vote against the other party rather than for their own party. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows Biden holding a commanding 13-point lead among voters who dislike both candidates. If that’s the case, that may be all Biden needs.
The second reason that approval ratings may be unreliable is that Trump is essentially running as a Republican incumbent. Presidents who lose usually don’t run again.
Because reelection is a referendum on the incumbent’s first term, presidential approval ratings tend to be predictive. Do voters want more of the same, or do they want change? But voters already know what a Trump presidency will be like — or they’ve never seen it before. Sometimes we are reminded of this by a barrage of negative advertisements like this one. Trump left office with an approval rating of 34%.
However, Trump’s unfavorable ratings are still higher than Biden’s. In fact, while Mr. Trump’s approval rating has always had a high lower limit (about 34%), it also has a very low upper limit of about 48%. Unlike Biden, Trump was never actually popular.
In the general election, if partisans reluctantly “go home” to essentially vote against the other party, Mr. Biden will likely have far more reliable “hold your nose” voters.
Other rule expirations or suspensions are also relevant. Given Biden’s unpopularity and the economic downturn, Republicans had predicted a “red tsunami” in 2022. Democrats fought a surprisingly good fight, effectively opposing Trump and Trumpism and advocating for abortion rights.
Biden is already widening the gender gap with Trump. Sure, abortion explains a lot of that, but his trial for assaulting and defaming author E. Jean Carroll and allegedly paying hush money to his porn star mistress probably doesn’t help. Attacking Taylor Swift, as his most ardent supporters have been doing recently, won’t solve the problem.
That said, if you believe that a second Trump presidency will be a disaster for the country, it is risky to reappoint a highly unpopular incumbent based on a hunch that the old rules no longer apply. Seems like a gamble.