Why Is Joe Biden So Unpopular? Part 2
I'm back with a continued look at why Joe Biden is polling so badly.
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A quick housekeeping note: it’s been a crazy week. My 10-year-old tested positive for COVID (his birthday, no less), and we’ve been stuck at home since Monday, quarantining in a situation that most accurately resembles “Lord of the Flies.” Thankfully, he’s fine; I’m not sick and haven’t tested positive. But I haven’t been able to leave my apartment much, and you try hosting a sick ten-year-old at home all week and tell me what parts of your sanity remain intact.
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This week, I’ve written two pieces diving into why Joe Biden’s poll numbers are so lousy. Both articles are free, in large measure, because I write things so people will read them. Putting articles behind a paywall is a necessary evil when you run a subscription newsletter, but it’s not something I like to do.
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Earlier this week, I dipped my analytical toe into why Joe Biden is polling so badly. Today, I’m going full Anchorman.
The Age Factor
Last week, I asked political pollster and pundit Sean Trende his thoughts on Biden’s lousy poll numbers, and after validating my befuddlement, he offered this take.
Some of it I think is that he's really old, and comes across as fragile. We've all seen the clips of him wandering on stage or forgetting things; it isn't just a media conspiracy. So I think people are maybe less likely to credit him when things go right.
I received a similar response from reader George Deptula:
People don’t like Joe Biden because: (1) They are tired of him. He has been in national politics “forever”. (2) His appearance. He talks, walks, and looks like an old man. But, the fact they don’t like him does not mean they will vote for Trump.
There’s no way around this issue: Biden is old, voters perceive him as too old to be president, and there’s little doubt that’s influencing their feelings about him.
Check out these numbers from an August poll:
Even 69% of Democrats think he’s too old to be an effective president! Call it ageism if you wish, but the issue is real.
Democratic partisans will point out that Trump is only four years younger and is making gaffes on a near-regular basis — and they’re right. But I think this is a vibes thing. Even though Biden appears much sharper cognitively than Trump, he looks frail. Trump sounds bad, but he looks relatively hale. As we learned years ago, image trumps all else in politics.
The problem for Biden is that unless he discovers the Fountain of Youth in the next few months, this problem won’t go away.
Having said that, I’m not convinced that it will matter all that much come November 2024. I suspect the Biden team will spend the 2024 campaign demonizing their opponent to the point that an inanimate carbon rod would seem more appealing than Trump’s return to the White House. But, if he’s unsuccessful in that endeavor or there are age-related incidents between now and November 2024, the issue will continue to come up.
There is another factor here as well … and I turn to reader Joseph Griffin, who argues that “Biden's poor polling is a result of two simple factors: (1) his lack of charisma and (2) the effective bashing of his presidency by right-wing media.”
I’ll get to the second point in a moment, but I think the charisma issue is another strong point. Biden is not an overly beguiling or mesmerizing figure, and, indeed, part of his success in 2020 came from the fact that he was more cattle than hat, particularly in comparison to Trump. He came across as a sober, serious politician, and that was the perfect antidote to four years of madness under Trump. But the downside is that he doesn’t necessarily energize voters like Reagan, Clinton, Obama, or Trump.
For all his many faults, many Republican voters view Trump as a charismatic figure. I don’t get it, but it’s a fact. And I suspect part of Biden’s problem is that because he’s more reserved and serious, he doesn’t excite voters as Trump does — and it would hardly be surprising if that’s reflected in the polls.
However, if that’s correct, it’s also good news for Biden because it would suggest that polls are masking his actual support. In December 2023, voters aren’t excited about Biden, but in November 2024, they might still vote for him because … he’s not the other guy.
Blame The Media
A few people wrote in and argued, as reader Michele Worden did, “that it is the power of marketing. Fox News keeps telling people that things are bad, and people tend to be low information and believe what they are told.” Reader David Policansky argues “the enduring power of right-wing media” and Trump’s ability “to successfully present a false narrative that tens of millions of people believe” are factors as well. My old friend and political analyst extraordinaire, Tom Schaller, takes a similar position, “they (the White House) don’t promote his successes well; the media doesn’t credit him sufficiently; and voters are irrational.”
So I think all of this is true … and not necessarily all that relevant.
As I noted in my Wednesday piece, presidents rarely top 50 percent in public opinion polls anymore because half the country is primed to hate the president, no matter what they do. So, while I agree that Fox News constantly dumping on Biden has kept his numbers low among Republican voters, none of this should surprise us. I assume some of you watched MSNBC from 2017 - 2021 … and those folks had nothing good to say about Donald Trump.
I also share Policansky’s wonderment at the power of right-wing media in getting conservatives to believe that Donald Trump isn’t a sociopathic lunatic. Still, as Schaller sagely notes, “voters are irrational.”
Still, Biden’s numbers aren’t just bad among Republicans. He’s struggling with some elements in the Democratic Party and among independents. Also, every president — and their supporters — complains about poor media coverage. And they all struggle to promote their successes. None of this is new. It’s hard for me to see how Biden is all that different from other presidents, so I’m not sure it’s a good explanation for his poor poll numbers.
Having said that, when you combine a failure to promote successful and popular policies with unremittingly negative media coverage and have a president who is not terribly charismatic and aged … well, you can do the math on that one.
Still, this is what campaigns are for — to blunt negative media coverage and brag about accomplishments. So, Biden will have plenty of opportunities to address the problem.
The Polls! The Polls!
Finally, a few folks suggested that the polls are wrong or relying too heavily on conservative and right-leaning voters. So I asked a friend of the newsletter, Elliot Morris, for his perspective, and he pointed to two possible factors.
First, he cited non-response as a potential explanation. Here’s a good primer on non-response bias, but the basic gist of it is that Democrats are less inclined to answer polls because they are feeling less enthused about politics, their party’s standard bearer, or a coming election.
The second factor he cited is something I’d never heard of before — "expressive responding,” particularly among young and lefty Democrats. Elliot was nice enough to send an article explaining the phenomenon. But here’s the summary:
There is considerable debate about whether survey respondents regularly engage in “expressive responding” – professing to believe something that they do not sincerely believe to show support for their in-group or hostility to an out-group. Nonetheless, there is widespread agreement that one study provides compelling evidence for a consequential level of expressive responding in a particular context. In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration rally there was considerable controversy about whether this inauguration crowd was the largest ever. At this time, a study was conducted which found that Donald Trump voters were more likely than Hillary Clinton voters or non-voters to indicate that an unlabeled photo of Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration rally showed more people than an unlabeled photo of Barack Obama’s 2009 presidential inauguration rally, despite the latter photo clearly showing more people.
However, this study was not pre-registered, suggesting that a replication is needed to establish the robustness of this important result. In the present study, we conducted an extended replication over two years after Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration rally. We found that despite this delay the original result replicated, albeit with a smaller magnitude. In addition, we extended the earlier study by testing several hypotheses about the characteristics of Republicans who selected the incorrect photo.
So basically, this means that people will lie to pollsters to show solidarity with their in-group. For Trump supporters, that means showing solidarity with Trump. For Democrats, it means showing solidarity with their liberal cohort, who are dissatisfied with Biden, even if they still plan to vote for him.
Morris notes that these are just theories, and there isn’t a ton of hard evidence backing them up, but they are possible explanations for why Biden is so badly underperforming in the polls.
Then again, maybe the polls are spot on; Biden is deeply unpopular and will lose to Trump. One can’t rule out that possibility. Maybe he’s doomed. But as everyone I spoke to seems to agree, considering how legislatively successful his presidency has been so far, the state of the economy, and the toxic nature of his key rival, Biden’s poll numbers are, at the very least, odd.
We don’t know what will happen next year. But, as I’ve tried to point out this week … it’s complicated.
What’s Going On
Slate’s David Faris has a rather dispiriting take on Biden’s poll numbers — and points out that they are historically bad.
The Biden campaign doesn’t appear to be all that worried about 2024. Make of that what you will.
Anti-vaxxers are gaining influence and power in red state legislatures.
Around a quarter of Trump supporters think he shouldn’t be the GOP nominee if he’s convicted of a crime. That doesn’t mean they won’t vote for him, but this could be a problem.
The New York Times has put together a fantastic deep dive looking at the machinations inside the Supreme Court that led to the toppling of Roe v. Wade.
Musical Interlude
Meanwhile, the last two weeks show Biden ahead in virtually all polls among likely voters. Including that NYT poll where the headline was negative.
Biden’s biggest promise to America was not only broken but it worsened. We are more divided than at any time since the Civil War. The majority of Americans don’t like war let alone 2 of them. The majority of Americans were horrified by the Afghanistan exit. The majority of Americans don’t care about government economic figures telling them that everything is great when the day to day reality of real life tells the opposite story. Finally, the border is a mess and millions of illegal migrants are here and none of them have been vetted. That’s why Biden is so unpopular!