Just as he makes his reelection announcement, Biden approval hits all-time low
David Freddoso
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Bidenistas who were hoping for a reelection announcement bump need to pray for better numbers.
Gallup has just released its latest survey on Biden’s approval rating. He has hit 37%, the lowest rating of his presidency so far and the lowest since November’s election. The data are almost all from before Biden’s video reelection announcement, so it’s entirely possible that next month’s numbers will look better for him. But maybe that’s just the hope talking.
SCHUMER’S ZOMBIE ERA VOTE IS JUST A STUNT
Gallup notes that Biden’s approval rating is comparable to that of President Ronald Reagan at the same point in his presidency. But it also notes that Reagan had a lot of upside. The Gipper was plagued in the first quarter of 1983 by double-digit unemployment (10.2% in April 1983) and sky-high interest rates (nearly 13% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage), thanks in no small part to a much-needed but severe tightening of the money supply to stop inflation. Biden faces no such mass unemployment problem that he could improve or even just claim credit for improving. And interest rates, although high by our current standards, are less than half what they were in Reagan’s time.
By the 1984 election, everything had changed for Reagan. Paul Volcker’s Federal Reserve finally had inflation under control. The Kemp-Roth tax bill that he had signed in August 1981 was at last injecting some life into the economy. Unemployment had fallen to 7.2% on its way down to 5%. National optimism was famously at a high, such that Reagan could credibly campaign on “it’s morning in America.”
Biden’s biggest problem might be that no one expects the economic picture to brighten as dramatically as it did then. To most people, neither unemployment nor interest rates seem likely to fall in such dramatic fashion in the next year and a half. Gasoline prices could also become an issue once again — a problem of Biden’s own making. Generally, public feelings about the economy are pessimistic. The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index inched just above 100 right before Reagan’s 1984 reelection. Today, at 62, the index is far below where it was in January 2021, when Biden took office, even though that was at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Gallup’s own Economic Confidence Index similarly has public sentiment at -44, whereas it had been above zero (meaning positive sentiment) as recently as June 2021.
Does this mean Biden will lose reelection? Not at all. Biden’s Democrats managed to avoid disaster in 2022 despite his poor poll numbers. And Republicans could improve his odds if they take a huge gamble and renominate the one man in America who routinely polls as more unpopular than the president.