Biden Deep Under Water

Civiqs has an online polling methodology that you can read about here. Is it right? Does it work? Who knows? We do know that traditional polling practices have been off the mark, sometimes wildly so, in recent years. So let’s take these numbers for what they are worth.

Civiqs finds Joe Biden under water in approval rating by 34% approve, 55% disapprove. That is brutal. But it gets even worse if you look at the numbers state by state. Biden is under water in 47 states: only in Hawaii, Massachusetts and Vermont do his approvers outnumber his disapprovers. And in almost all states, Biden’s name is anathema. The worst are West Virginia and Wyoming, where his numbers are 18/75 and 18/76 respectively.

Biden flops across the country, if not quite so spectacularly. What keeps him within shouting distance is that his numbers are relatively not terrible in some of the biggest states: California, 42/46; New York, 42/46; and Illinois, 43/47. The rest of the country can’t stand the man. Notably, independents disfavor Biden by a shocking 22/65. In this poll, the Democrats’ chronic gender gap is present. They have a terrible time appealing to men, who disapprove of Biden by 30/63.

Are these numbers an accurate assessment of where Biden now stands? My own organization polled Biden’s approval in Minnesota three months ago and found him under water at 45/50. We use a top Washington, D.C. polling firm. The Civiqs survey shows Biden in much worse shape in Minnesota, at 39/52. Honestly, I find that hard to credit, although it certainly is possible that Biden’s numbers have declined in recent months due to inflation, the infant formula shortage, skyrocketing gasoline prices, and so on.

There is another respect in which these numbers might be unduly favorable to Biden. Civiqs has Biden carrying Hispanic voters at 45/42. Based on everything else we are seeing in survey data, I think those numbers significantly overstate Biden’s standing with that demographic. I note, too, that the “other” group, i.e. Asian-Americans, disapproves of Biden by 39/50.

Polls are basically reading tea leaves. Their scientific basis has always been dubious, and track records in recent election cycles are not good. Nevertheless, it is not meaningless to ask Americans what they think about Joe Biden and his administration. When polls all point in the same direction, the conclusion is probably solid: Biden is deeply under water. Most people, for good reasons, think his administration has made their lives worse. That should cause a large majority of those who are not on the take–we should never underestimate how many billions of dollars the Democrats hand out in exchange for votes–to choose an alternative path in November.

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