Those numbers are just not possible in today’s environment.īiden’s slide is noteworthy, but it is also exactly what we should expect given the structural conditions of American politics in the 21st century. At the peak of his popularity, in the wake of the Persian Gulf War of 1991, George HW Bush had a job approval rating of 89 percent, including 82 percent among Democrats and 88 percent among independents. This is a major change from the 1970s and 1980s, when the public was less polarized and numbers could swing from the low 30s (even the 20s) to the high 60s and beyond. Modern presidents have a high floor for public opinion but a low ceiling. Some of this reflects circumstances, some of it reflects the individuals, but most of it is a function of partisan and ideological polarisation. George W Bush was more divisive than Bill Clinton Barack Obama was more divisive than Bush Donald Trump was more divisive than Obama and Biden may well end up more divisive than Trump, at least in terms of approval rating by partisan affiliation. One of the most consistent findings from the past 20 years of public opinion research is that each new president is more divisive than the last. With that said, there’s another dynamic at work, one that should guide our expectations for how popular Biden is and how popular he could become.
Taken together, you have a pretty good explanation for why Biden is doing much worse with the public than he was at the beginning of the year.
And as seen in the latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy is growing at a slower rate than it did at the start of the summer. The administration quickly adjusted to the chaos, though, and by the time the last American soldiers left Monday, the US military and its allies had evacuated around 124,000 people, including thousands of US citizens and tens of thousands of Afghan nationals. At the same time that delta took hold, Biden also faced a huge backlash from the news media and his partisan opponents over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, which began in chaotic fashion with the collapse of the Afghan national army, the subsequent advance of the Taliban and, of course, the suicide bombing in Kabul that killed 13 US service members. Not only is the United States still in the grip of a pandemic, but also the delta variant of the coronavirus has led to record infections and deaths in Florida, Texas and other states with relatively low vaccination rates (and where officials have taken a stand against mitigation efforts). There is a laundry list of reasons for this. As of Friday morning, he was at 45.8 percent approval and 48.5 percent disapproval - from a high of 54 percent approval, 41 percent disapproval at the end of his first 100 days. President Joe Biden’s job approval rating is on the downslope.
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