Well it's now been just over six months since Joe Biden was sworn in as president. Thought I'd check Real Clear Politics to see his latest polling average. In doing so every few months, we see a trajectory emerging.

Biden's first polling average a week after being sworn in:

+18

55% approve
37% disapprove

After three months:

+11

53.1% approve
42.1% disapprove

Now, after six months:

+6.4

51.3% approve
44.9% disapprove

That downward trend line is nothing too shocking really. It's pretty normal for any new president to start out broadly popular and then lose a lot of support over the first two or three years of their presidency, only to rebound in the face of overreach by the resurgent rival party in time to win re-election. That's just kind of a normal historical pattern. Trump was an exception to this rule in that even his first RCP average was below 50%. Of course, HE didn't get re-elected. That's because he was never actually popular and in fact had lost the popular vote even in 2016. He never legitimately represented this country or what it believes in. Anyway though, while this downward trajectory we're seeing for Biden so far looks normal on the surface, the details aren't so normal. First of all, Biden's starting polling average to begin with was lower than that of either of the last couple Democratic presidents we've had: lower than Obama's and also lower than Clinton's. And secondly, but just as importantly, something else abnormal is the groups he's losing support among and who he's making up some of the difference with.

Speaking to that second point about the groups, I took a look at the recent survey most representative of overall public opinion at present: the most recent poll by Politico and Morning Consult, which has Biden above water by a margin of 7 percentage points; the closest in the current sample to his present average. Checking out pages 14 to 16, you'll find some remarkable demographic data that should, for any Democrat anyway (I being one of those), be deeply concerning. The first thing I noticed was right at the top, where it showed Biden now more popular with men than women, which is significant when you consider that 58% of registered Democrats are women and even more so when you consider that, frankly, I've never seen another poll before up to now in which a modern Democratic president was better liked by men than by women. Democrats who lack the support of women lose. The second thing I noticed was his drastically increased support among the wealthiest Americans coupled with falling -- indeed now far lower -- support among both middle class and especially working class people. Finally, I also noticed that his support among white Americans has increased compared to last year's presidential election while his support among black and Hispanic Americans has weakened. It cumulatively forms a picture wherein Biden is increasingly supported primarily by wealthy white men and viewed more critically mainly by working class women (hi!), increasingly including the non-white ones. This is very distressing because it suggests that the Democratic Party here in this country appears to be, however more belatedly, on the same basic trajectory as the British Labour Party, which is no longer able to win major elections because they've, ironically, lost the support of the country's working class.

2020 election vs. now:

57% of women voted for Biden
50% of women currently approve of Biden's job performance

45% of men voted for Biden
54% of men currently approve of Biden's job performance

59% of Americans making over $100,000/year approve of Biden's job performance
51% of Americans making between $50,000 and $100,000 approve
49% of Americans making under $50,000 approve

In last year's election, by contrast, Biden got 55% of the working class vote, 56% of the middle class vote, and lost the upper class vote.

41% of white people voted for Biden
45% of white people currently approve of Biden's job performance

87% of black people voted for Biden
78% of black people currently approve of Biden's job performance

65% of Hispanic people voted for Biden
59% of Hispanic people currently approve of Biden's job performance

(2020 exit poll data for reference)

You might've guessed that I've been continuing to follow polling data closely throughout the year. Well I have and what they cumulatively say is that the reasons working class, and increasingly even middle class, people are losing faith in Biden and the Democrats have to do with the fact that they've experienced less economic recovery and also are much more concerned about surging rates of violent crime than wealthier people are, being as they tend to be more directly affected. Women in general are also more concerned about rising crime than men, as are black and Hispanic people more so than white people. The recent resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic in recent weeks is also starting to weigh on support for the nation's current leadership overall, mostly among working class and middle class voters with fewer work-from-home options and often more public-facing occupations.

Let's take the issue of crime, for example. According to the most recent survey by The Economist and YouGov, wherein Americans are asked how serious an issue they consider crime to be at present, here are...

The percentages of people, by demographic group, who replied that they regard crime as a "very important" issue (see page 146):

67% of people making under $50,000/year
67% of people making between $50,000 and $100,000
55% of people making over $100,000

67% of women
63% of men

76% of black people
71% of Hispanic people
Something like 60% of white people

Overall, 65% of respondents described crime as a "very important" issue, compared to 52% who felt the same way about criminal justice reform (see page 147).

Likewise with the coronavirus, according to the aforementioned Politico/Morning Consult poll, Biden is now above water on his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic by a margin of just 5 percentage points (51% approve, 46% disapprove), whereas up until recent weeks this was by far his best issue. He had consistently averaged over 60% job approval on the issue before the delta variant began to dramatically escalate cases in recent weeks. Here again, the demographic breakdown is revealing.

Approval of Biden's Covid response (see page 122):

60% of those making over $100,000/year still approve of Biden's Covid response
51% of those making between $50,000 and $100/000 still approve
47% of those making under $50,000 approve

53% of men still approve of Biden's Covid response
49% of women approve <-- more public-facing jobs here, typically

Economic optimism/pessimism (see page 208):

54% of those making over $100,000/year believe the economy will improve in the next year
41% of those making between $50,000 and $100,000 believe the economy will improve
34% of those making under $50,000/year believe the economy will improve

44% of men believe the economy will improve in the next year
36% of women believe the economy will improve

The bottom line here is that the Rescue Plan (a.k.a. the March Covid relief bill) is really the only notable thing that's been done legislatively by this administration to date and the Biden Administration's once-successful vaccination program has pretty much ground to a halt of late amid broad complacency; a combination of realities for which many people are to blame that has allowed the delta variant to take hold in every U.S. state. But leadership is expected of presidents. More needs to be done in general on a wide variety of issues. The "Biden blitz" that progressives used to talk about back in the early days so far remains one bill passed after six months, most provisions of which will expire by the end of the year. The next Franklin Roosevelt this president is not exactly. And also, the Democrats really need to start taking the recent upswing in violent crime across urban and even suburban America more seriously than wokeness credentials. Wealthy and privileged people who are largely removed from the harsher realities faced by ordinary people might be fine with a lax administration that mainly just virtue signals and talks a lot more than it acts on serious problems facing the nation, but here on the ground people are growing more fearful and pessimistic about both the present state of affairs and the future alike again. Especially people who form the core of the Democratic Party base and whom Biden and the Democrats cannot well afford to keep losing like they're starting to now. Don't be the UK Labour Party. Don't posture. Care! Do something! Listen to what your core constituents are telling you loud and clear! This downward trajectory can be changed or it can become structural. The choice is there before you.

Great post!

Just wanted to add this 538 page which tracks and charts the approval/disapproval rating of a president over his/her entire tenure. As such, rather than just have some specific points in time, there's a graph with all the ups and down - though truth been told, Biden's approval has been surprisingly stable so far and just the disapproval has risen out of the formerly undecided: 

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/

And just for comparison, here's Trump's old chart:

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

Polling really only works in aggregate (and even then it has issues), so it is hard for me to really accept the results of a single poll/pollster as proof of any big changes in preferences. Further, you can't really just put approval numbers over voting trends and expect a 1:1 trend. As voting is a comparison, you may disapprove of someone and still vote for them because the other candidate is worse.

Thanks!

I wish RCP did that kind of tracking over time. It'd make things easier for me 'cause I've come to trust their averages slightly more than Nate Silver's. Compared to election results, it seems like 538 tends to overestimate Democratic support more by excluding Republican-leaning polls like the Rasmussen ones because he's a liberal and thus concludes that conservative pollsters are often incredulous and not worth including in his averaging. The final tabulations on 538 on election day predicted an 8-point Biden win, while RCP's suggested 7.2. Biden actually won by 4.5. Both (again) underestimated Trump support slightly was the main reason, but RCP's gauged Biden's support almost exactly, however. Their final average had Biden pegged at 51.2% support on election day and he wound up with 51.4%. Nate Silver's had Biden at 52.6% at the same point, resulting in a less accurate prediction overall. RCP doesn't try to be as "scientific" about which polls are credible or not, they just average and typically land on slightly more accurate predictions.

*shrugs* Well nothing is perfect. I just go based on the best data I can find that's available. Dunno what else you want. Thought the snapshot was worthy of mention and note.

Worth mention, sure, but I'm not sure if there is much beyond that. I would hypothesize that on a scale of a few months, we shouldn't expect significant partisan shifts. Partisanship tends to be a pretty strong force so I'd presume that these shifts you are seeing since election day are largely polling variation and enthusiasm shifts and not partisan shifts. 

Trump is definitely proof of that.  70+ million votes with the worst approval rating in a long time.  Even though he had a pretty low approval and high disapproval level he still gain the majority of the partisan vote.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2021/02/05/trump-shifted-campaign-donor-money-into-his-private-business-after-losing-the-election/?sh=46815b7c4418

So I thought this was a very interesting article not because its Trump but actually how politicians really make their money.  Now Trump has the luxury of having property that he can basically charge his Political Action Committee (PAC) against and the number of different organizations he and his groups have created to squeeze all of that juice people have contributed to him shows how easy it is to get around those campaign funds restrictions.

You can really see why Trump loves going on the campaign trail.  Before he left office he was sitting on 1.6 billion in campaign donations and since leaving office using this successful "Stolen Election" message, he has secured I believe 100 million more. If you think about it, he could continue this tour for at least 4 years, just flying to different cities, charging big money back to his businesses or create more PAC and other organizations to charge and pocket the money.  I hope we continue to see these reports because its very interesting how much politicians can pay themselves from campaign donations.

Just as someone who's followed American politics at least loosely since the presidential election of 1992, I somewhat disagree. Usually political shifts occur on an election-by-election basis (as in they last for two-year periods) and occur almost immediately following a major election outcome. Take the 2016 presidential election, for example. The immediate result of that was the largest demonstration in American history in the form of the 2017 Women's March, followed by several large-scale follow-ups (the Climate March, the March for Science, the March for Truth, the Tax March), all attended by hundreds of thousands of people at minimum, followed by a summer of those, ya know, tea party style town hall meetings mostly organized to protest the proposed law to repeal the Affordable Care Act, all leading up to the off-year elections in the fall that saw the Democrats make their biggest single-election gains in Virginia since Reconstruction and pick up the governor's seat in New Jersey and ultimately a Senate seat even in ultra-conservative Alabama at the height of the Me Too movement (which gained nationwide traction and visibility at this particular point in history for a reason having very much to do with who was elected president the preceding year). In fact, Trump reached the lowest job approval rating of his entire presidency within that same calendar year, immediately following the defeat of pedophile Roy Moore, who naturally he had enthusiastically endorsed, for the aforementioned Alabama Senate seat. My point being that the backlash to Trump's election was immediate, building up to its peak point the same year he assumed the presidency.

To further characterize how the human mind works with respect to politics though, the message the GOP got from the defeat of Roy Moore in Alabama, which was an especially stunning development that seemed to signal they could potentially even lose the Senate the next year despite structural advantages, was to finally pass a version of their tax cut bill. The new tax law was unpopular, but did have a support base in the Republican Party and this simple fact that the Republican-controlled Congress had actually passed a real law now stopped the bleeding and stabilized Trump's poll numbers at a slightly higher level above 40%, whereas they had been in a state of free-fall. This didn't dampen anti-Trump enthusiasm on the Democratic side of the aisle (as evidence by the March For Our Lives demanding stricter gun laws taking place a few months later, attended by millions), but it did shore up Republican support for the Trump Administration. That wasn't adequate to prevent the Democrats from having their best midterm cycle the next year since 1974, but you can see what I'm getting at.

What we're seeing here is much more subdued than all that because Joe Biden is a much more normal, boring president than Trump was. And I suspect you're right in the sense that a lot of these shifts we're seeing could reflect recent drops in Democratic enthusiasm rather than fundamental shifts in underlying party alignments. But 2021's major off-year elections are just about three months away now and whether many people who voted for Biden last year actually switch to voting Republican this year or instead just opt to sit this year and the midterms next year out, the real-world effect is similar. Republicans typically make gains in low-turnout elections, which tells you they aren't very good at eating the Democratic base of support, but also that there is, in reality, an often unmotivated, very edible base of support there. (Yum!) Which mainly consists of its working class. I wouldn't predict Republican landslides either this fall or next, but I would predict Republican gains owing to an enthusiasm gap favoring them emerging, including the GOP retaking the House of Representatives next year, based on the current trajectory of things. I believe these shifts are real not only based on the polling data available, but also based on my own experience just living as a working class woman who voted for Biden. Shifts in my own thinking and focus are reflected in these surveys. I've gone from relieved by vaccines and hopeful for a "Biden blitz" of legislation I mostly support after seeing the initial raft of executive orders he signed at the outset to viewing this as a lax, weak administration that embraces a largely hands-off approach to everything from rising crime to foreign policy to border policy to kinda even the virus nowadays and mostly defers to Congress when it comes to his own legislative policies in the name of partisan and bi-partisan unity, etc. There's just an emerging theme of not really caring and pretty much just letting everything go to hell, in my observation. I suspect people who live like me may indeed think somewhat like me about this situation.

I would add though that the Democrats can minimize the damage by passing laws. The infrastructure and family bills currently being considered in Congress poll twice as well as the Republican tax cut of 2017, enjoying 70 and 63% public support respectively in the most recent survey I saw. Successful passage of these bills before the fall election cycle begins in earnest next month could tilt public opinion on the major voting issue that is the economy in a Democratic direction, whereas currently Biden and the Democrats statistically tie the Republicans on the issue. In order to actually keep the House in Democratic hands after next year's midterms though, the crime rates will need to fall, the virus will need to be fundamentally under control, and it might help here in Texas if the border situation weren't as chaotic as it presently is too, I mean if we're serious about turning the state blue in the near future anyway. I have doubts about that all actually happening.

Now the 2024 presidential election is another thing though. I mean, let's face it, the Republicans are so out of touch that they'll probably nominate Trump again and that probably gives whoever the next Democratic nominee is a starting advantage there. But that's 2024 and I'm more focused on the immediate term here right now.

Biden’s approval might have been artificially inflated as well because of his proximity comparison to a circus clown show like Trump. It’s easy to look good when compared to a guy who might go down in history as the US’s worst President. But now USians are sobering up, and remembering that the US government is insufficient in serving their country.