In the era of modern polls, no president has he ever won re-election with approval ratings as low as Joe Biden's at this point in his first term.
For obvious reasons, incumbents have generally needed at least close to 50% approval before Election Day to win. And despite the improving economy, President Biden's approval rating has been stubbornly low. around 40% in the survey averages. Reaching 50% in November seems daunting.
Fortunately for those who want Biden to win, or who really just want Donald Trump to lose, that number may not matter as much as it used to.
You may have noticed that many of the old rules of politics are past their expiration date. They were not so much strict laws as general rules. Still, it's a bad time to rely on those general rules.
The old maxim that “as goes Ohio, so goes the nation,” for example, did not apply in 2020, when Trump won the state but lost the election.
The still widespread conviction that politics is about money and that donors have enormous influence on elections has not been true for quite some time. Ask Michael Bloomberg or Ron DeSantis.
From 1888 to 1996, the electoral college result coincided with the popular result. In 2000 and again in 2016, this was not the case.
For decades, successful presidential and congressional candidates followed the rule that in primaries you tilt toward your party's liberal or conservative base and then return to the center in general elections. Barack Obama largely ignored that rule, and Trump really ignored it, with no repercussions. And most House and Senate candidates now ignore that rule.
This is because the electorate has reached the point where the real challenge to the mandate is usually in the primaries, not the general elections. As a result, candidates increasingly rely on mobilizing their base rather than persuading middle voters.
This points to one reason approval ratings may no longer matter as much. In a polarized electorate, most people vote more against the other party than for their own.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that among voters those who don't like both candidates, Biden has a 13-point lead. If that holds, it could be all the president needs.
A second reason these numbers might be unreliable: Trump is essentially running as the incumbent. Normally, presidents who lose do not run again. And they certainly don't claim that they didn't actually lose.
Presidential approval ratings have tended to be predictive because a reelection bid is a referendum on the incumbent's first term: Do voters want more of the same or are they dissatisfied enough to elect a lesser-known and proven contender? But voters already know what a Trump presidency would be like, or at least can be reminded with a barrage of negative ads.
Trump left office with a 34% approval rating. This is why Nikki Haley tends to do better than Trump in hypothetical matchups with Biden: She is a candidate for change in a way that Trump cannot be.
It's true that Trump is currently beating Biden in many hypothetical matchups in battleground states. That should worry Democrats and anyone who doesn't want Trump in the White House. But Trump's favorability ratings are comparable to Biden's. While Trump has always had a high level of support (around 34%), he also has a low ceiling, around 48%. Unlike Biden, Trump has never been popular.
When even dissatisfied partisans reluctantly “come home” in the general election (essentially to vote against the other party), Biden will likely have a much larger group of “holding their noses” voters to rely on.
The expiration – or at least the temporary suspension – of other political rules is also relevant. Republicans expected a “red tsunami” in the 2022 midterm elections, given Biden's unpopularity and a struggling economy. But the Democrats did surprisingly well because they stood against Trumpism and in favor of the right to abortion.
In fact, the old rule that the abortion issue helps Republicans was turned upside down after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The results of recent state initiatives on the issue suggest that Biden could be carried to a second term solely by abortion rights voters.
The president is already opening a huge gender gap with Trump. The abortion issue surely explains much of this, although the cases against Trump for assaulting and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll and allegedly paying money to cover up an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels likely contributed. Attacking Taylor Swift, as her most ardent fans have done recently, will not help.
All that said, if you believe that a second Trump presidency would be a disaster for the country, renominating a very unpopular incumbent with the feeling that the old rules no longer apply still seems like a risky bet. But the old rule that political parties make decisions based on what is best for them (or the country) expired a long time ago.
