Happy Sunday! By definition it is no longer Saturday, when I usually send the subscribers-only thread. That’s because I knew we would get a lot of POTUS job approval polls conducted entirely after the fall of Kabul today and wanted to be sure all the trends were as updated as possible before I sent out this letter.
So, here they are. Biden’s job approval rating per 538:
RealClearPolitics:
And the smoothed data from YouGov/The Economist and Civiqs, which are both vote/partisanship-adjusted (more on this down below).
Let’s focus on three things for today:
First, the charts show Biden’s net job approval dropping steadily almost every week since his inauguration. That’s due in part because of a decline in his approval rating, but mostly due to a steeper rise in his disapproval rating. On average across aggregates (NB: a meta-average, perhaps?) the president’s approval dropped 5 points from January to August 22nd while his disapproval rose by ten. This decline has been predictable, roughly matching the shift for presidents Obama and Trump (see the Economist/YouGov chart for parallel trends).
Second, the aggregates show more movement against Biden in the last week than there was on any week in the last 7 months. The president’s net approval dropped four points last week, compared to an average of 0.5-1 point each week prior. I think it’s pretty clear the fall of Kabul last weekend and (especially) the media coverage of the fiasco has impacted Biden negatively.
However, it’s worth quibbling for a moment about the differences between surveys. YouGov and Civiqs, which both balance their samples to be representative of the population by demographics and politics (either past vote or current partisanship) have picked up only a modest move against Biden: maybe a point or so on net approval. We could infer from this that the last week has also dampened the share of Democrats willing to answer polls, or perhaps produced a surge in response rates among Republicans and Independts who want to express their dissatisfaction with the president. In fact, there is some outright evidence for this: Johannes Fischer, who runs polls for the think tank/polling outlet Data for Progress, said on Twitter (I know, I know) that they’ve seen an increase in response rates among GOP voters recently. Today’s new CBS News/YouGov poll also found a smaller prorated decline in Biden’s net rating than other pollsters or the aggregates.
Your interpretation of the data will come down to which pollsters you trust and whether you think pollsters that balance their data by party are more accurate than the ones who don’t. For what it’s worth, both YouGov and Civiqs had higher numbers than other pollsters for Trump’s approval rating throughout 2020, when other firms may have underestimated his approvers by two or three percentage points. I, for one, thing the aggregates are still meaningfully biased towards Democrats.
But no matter how you slice it, the public opinion has soured a bit on Biden over the last few months. He is net positive still — by roughly 3 points in both the 538 tracker and YouGov data — but that may soon change. Perhaps, over the next few months, we will find out what changes when the unifier president stops being so unifying.
I agree that Biden's approval rating has gone down because of Afghanistan and the media coverage of it. I am wondering how much do you think Biden's Covid approval rating matters here?
Elliot: I hate it when you ask me impossible questions. I should have explicitly included this as an explanation in the post, because it's the obvious one, but we can't know its precise impact since pollsters don't ever ask people "why did you stop approving of the president" because they don't usually conduct panel surveys (where they interview the same people over time). Gun to my head, I'd say... 70%?
I will squander an opinion that when the money starts rolling out for states and the pandemic numbers start to drop Joe will be more popular than the Beatles, who were more popular than Jesus.
Hi Elliott,
I agree that Biden's approval rating has gone down because of Afghanistan and the media coverage of it. I am wondering how much do you think Biden's Covid approval rating matters here?
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/coronavirus-polls/
-Elliot
Elliot: I hate it when you ask me impossible questions. I should have explicitly included this as an explanation in the post, because it's the obvious one, but we can't know its precise impact since pollsters don't ever ask people "why did you stop approving of the president" because they don't usually conduct panel surveys (where they interview the same people over time). Gun to my head, I'd say... 70%?
I will squander an opinion that when the money starts rolling out for states and the pandemic numbers start to drop Joe will be more popular than the Beatles, who were more popular than Jesus.
I think I would take the other side of that bet!
OK, $25 to a mutually agreed-upon charity,
https://www.fairvote.org/donate
Or https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/
You have a deal
OK!