Presidents poll poorly in the fall before a re-election year. Then they win.
The press should be having déjà vu, not amnesia when it comes to polls showing Biden lagging behind in the run-up to a campaign.
By Mark Horan
It’s been almost two weeks since The New York Times released its battleground states poll showing Joe Biden losing in five of the six states (Colorado, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia) and winning just Wisconsin. Ten days is a lifetime in today’s hyperactive news cycle; one would think the poll would be long forgotten. Nevertheless, it persists, to paraphrase Mitch McConnell.
Times polls carry weight with politicos and the media. A survey the organization took in 2022, three weeks before the mid-terms, declared that interest in the abortion issue had waned, setting off a round of howling from Democratic party leaders, especially Clintonites, urging the party to shift its focus to economic issues immediately.
Of course, a month later, Democrats carried five crucial Senate races with abortion juicing turnout among women especially.
The latest Times poll also sounds alarm bells for Democrats. It showed Trump leading Biden 48–44 across the six states. Biden has lost ground among several key constituencies: younger voters, Latinos, Black men, women, and Democrats overall. He has not gained ground among non-college educated whites, despite concerted efforts to generate new manufacturing and construction jobs and his support for the recent autoworkers strike.
Worse still, 71 percent of swing state voters think Joe Biden is too old to be president.
Showing the staying power of the poll, one CNN anchor last Friday asked David Chalian, the network’s political director, if it was too late for Biden to turn his campaign around. Chalian reminded folks that no, it’s a year before the election, a little too early to count out anyone.
It’s not as if Biden isn’t in danger. He certainly is. But we’re forgetting a crucial lesson from the past: presidents rarely have strong polling numbers in the year before a re-election campaign.
We’ve Seen This Movie Before.
Former Obama advisor and CNN analyst David Axelrod tweeted the day after the poll’s release that Biden needed to decide whether running “was in HIS best interest or the country’s.”
Axelrod denies saying Biden shouldn’t run, insisting he merely suggested the president consider it. But it’s curious counsel coming from a senior Obama aide, given that his boss suffered from nearly identical polling numbers during his third year in office. See the Times 2011 story below.
A week later, the Times ran a follow-up with this as its lede:
President Obama’s support is eroding among elements of his base, and a yearlong effort to recapture the political center has failed to attract independent voters, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, leaving him vulnerable at a moment when pessimism over the country’s direction is greater than at any other time since he took office.
Substitute the name Biden for Obama, and this paragraph could run today because, like many before them, Biden and Obama both have had the third-year blues, as this chart demonstrates.
Counting Nixon and George W. Bush among the poor showings since they barely received majority approval, the chart leaves only two presidents, Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush, with high ratings. The elder Bush’s number was illusory. Within weeks, his approval would begin a steep tumble brought on by a deepening recession. By July of 1992, it had bottomed out at 29 percent.
Eisenhower? He was a national hero, of course, and the architect of Hitler’s defeat, riding a post-war unity wave coupled with a booming economy. No wonder so many liked Ike in 1955.
Polarization makes pre-election polling numbers worse.
Why is the third year such a problem? Perhaps it’s the adage that familiarity breeds contempt. The incumbent has done just enough to alienate significant blocs of voters, perhaps not enough to satisfy his supporters or those on the fence. Many voters don’t know what he’s accomplished, a problem often corrected during the campaign. And, of course, voters have yet to weigh their feelings about the incumbent relative to the challenger. Another adage: “The most important question in life is ’compared to what?’”
And today, hardened partisan attitudes make matters worse. By 2010, with the rise of the Tea Party on the right and the Occupy Wall Street movement on the left, positive job approvals were becoming elusive, as partisans were increasingly virulent in their opposition to an incumbent from the other party. Needless to say, Donald Trump, with his instinct for sewing distrust, has cast these divisions in concrete.
It’s not enough to disagree with the other side today; outright hostility is required.
Fealty to one party is inherent in our two-party system, but that system used to be more flexible, allowing Eisenhower to secure enough Democratic votes to win in a landslide in 1956 and Nixon to do the same in 1972. In 1964, Republicans gave Lyndon Johnson enough support that he, too, won a landslide. Long after these elections, Americans frequently crossed lines to vote for popular Senators and House members of the other party.
Not so today, as we know. Voters on both sides have increasing disdain and distrust for each other, as evidenced by this Pew Research chart showing the character traits Americans on each side attribute to the opposition.
Unsurprisingly, in the Times swing state poll, 42 percent rated Biden very unfavorably, and 43 percent rated Trump very unfavorably. Over the past several years, one could find those strong partisan reactions to any contested Senate or House race.
Obama, like Biden, was trailing in swing states in 2011.
In October of 2011, not only had Obama’s approval number fallen — even among Democrats — Obama was also tied with Mitt Romney in a November Gallup survey of 12 swing states, and was barely beating Rick Perry and Herman Cain.
By December, Romney had a five-point lead. Gallup also found that Democratic enthusiasm was lagging behind that of Republican voters, a common complaint heard about Biden now.
Biden has baggage, but all candidates do.
Biden’s case differs from Obama’s in one obvious category: Biden’s age is a factor with three quarters of the electorate and 62 percent say he lacks the mental sharpness to be president. You can’t sugarcoat that finding; it will certainly be a problem for the Biden campaign.
But every candidate carries baggage. At least some of Obama’s problems were rooted in white racial resentment, as abhorrent as that may be, and the unemployment rate in the fall of 2011 was 9.1 percent — a rate that is often a precursor to electoral defeat for presidents.
And then there’s Donald Trump, king of the heavy luggage. Totaling up his problems, including whether he has a firm enough grip on reality to be president, would require several hundred more words.
Even with the age factor, Biden’s significant slide with younger voters and Democrats overall came just as the Israeli-Palestinian crisis escalated. Biden’s steadfast support for Israel, an issue on which progressives and young people disagree, may explain some of Biden’s weaknesses in this poll.
A razor-thin margin has won every election since 2012, and this one will be no different. Given the partisan split and the difficulty of keeping together the Democratic coalition, any other Democratic candidate would likely be in as much trouble, if not more. It’s hard to find a candidate who can click with the wide range of voters necessary, from Black people to suburbanites, from young progressives to older moderates.
Biden has proved he can do it. His victory is far from assured, but neither is his defeat.
