President Joe Biden’s polls indicate higher disapproval ratings than approval ratings. So does that mean he’s doomed to lose his reelection bid? To test this, I look at all presidents since Gerald Ford, to see where they were at this point in their presidency. While Biden’s behind almost every candidate, some presidents looking good at this point lost their election for a second term. Some presidents who looked like bad bets at this stage won another term.
According to Steven Shepard with Politico, “President Joe Biden’s poll numbers keep getting worse. November started with New York Times/Siena College polls showing Trump ahead in four of the six swing states.” He’s blamed for his age (though he’s not much older than Trump), and the Middle East conflict (supporters of both sides blame him). Even with reports of strong third quarter economic growth, the news commentator stated “This probably means more inflation.”
In other words, each story seems to be spun against the President, no matter what.
There are no shortages of pollsters, pundits and political scientists who claim they can predict the future this far out from Election Day. But such models don’t exactly have a great record of doing so. It’s like guessing the outcome of the game in the third quarter, third period, or seventh inning of a sporting event, and one team holds only a narrow lead.
According to The Economist/YouGov polls, Biden has a 44 percent approval rating, and a 54 percent disapproval rating. Rasmussen Reports, no friend to the Democratic Party, has Biden by the same exact score in their latest survey.
If you look at approval ratings minus disapproval ratings, Biden is eighth of nine presidents, only behind Donald Trump who was at 39 percent approval rating and 57 percent disapproval rating in late 2019, prior to the 2020 election. And, of course, Trump didn’t win, which fuels speculation that Biden could meet a similar fate, though he is facing the same man he defeated before.
The top six presidents in our survey all had presidential approval ratings higher than their disapproval ratings, with five of them sporting a nine-point lead in percentages. But not all of them won reelection, of course. Take the case of Gerald Ford, who had a 46%-37% lead in approval-to-disapproval ratings at this point in his political career. The man who defeated him, Jimmy Carter, later held a 51%-37% advantage in approval-to-disapproval, only to lose as well. Similarly, George H. W. Bush looked like a good bet for reelection, when he had a 52%-39% approval-to-disapproval rating advantage, and also lost.
Bill Clinton’s numbers were a tad better than Bush’s at this point, but in January of 1996, he was underwater politically. He still won another term. Barack Obama was seventh in this survey, with a 42%-50% disparity in approval ratings vs. disapproval ratings and was reelected in 2012.
Biden has regained his lead over Trump in the polls, according to Newsweek. But the point is, it’s still way too early in the polls to guarantee a prediction based upon where a candidate stands today in surveys.
Nobody should guarantee a Biden victory, nor should they count him out.
John A. Tures is Professor of Political Science and Coordinator of the Political Science Program at LaGrange College, in LaGrange, Georgia.