Reuters: Biden’s Bad Approval “A Dark Sign for His Party’s Prospects”

Don’t shoot the messenger, it’s Reuters delivering this steaming bad news for Democrats heading into the midterms.

They actually call Biden’s poor approval ratings “a dark sign” for his party. No kidding. But, it could be worse! Biden hit down to 36% approval back in May so sitting at 40%, a number unchanged since last week, isn’t going in the wrong direction I supposed.

Nonetheless, there’s no improvement, and Biden’s primetime Jake Tapper interview on Tuesday, filled with many non-answers and garbled Washington speak, won’t do much to turn things around:

President Joe Biden’s approval rating stayed close to the lowest level of his presidency this week, a dark sign for his Democratic Party’s prospects in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday found.

The two-day national poll found that 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance, unchanged from a week earlier.

The president’s sagging popularity, which drifted as low as 36% in May and June, has weighed on his party’s chances in November. Republicans are favored to win the House of Representatives, though experts say Democrats have a better chance of keeping the Senate.

The good news for Republicans continues to show up in the voter priorities for November. It’s an election that will be less and less about fervent anger over the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and much more a referendum on whether voters feel better off under Biden than they did a few years ago:

This week’s poll showed about a third of Americans – including one in five Democrats and two in five Republicans – saw the economy as the most important problem facing the country.

Much smaller shares of respondents pointed to other issues as more pressing, with one in 10 Democrats saying the country’s biggest problem was the end of national abortion rights, while the same share of Republicans pointed to crime.

It’s the economy through and through, even Democrats agree. As Liz Peek noted in a recent op-ed, when looking at issue after issue, voters are trusting Biden’s policies less and less:

Perhaps the most telling sign is a recent Gallup poll in which people were asked which party can better handle the issue most important to them. Respondents picked Republicans over Democrats 48% to 37%, the highest margin earned by the party since 1946 and, according to political analysts, a strong indicator that the GOP will take both houses of Congress in November.

For sure, other surveys point in the opposite direction, including generic ballot polls which only slightly favor Republicans, and a slight improvement in President Biden’s approval ratings, but as voters appear to de-emphasize both abortion and the judicial system – issues on which Democrats score well – GOP hopes are rising.

Peek is correct in saying that the GOP’s lead on issues is the highest it’s been since 1946, a stunning number demonstrating just how low Biden’s presidency has sunk his party and created the red wave:

Gallup’s latest data shows that 48% of Americans believe the Republican Party is best equipped, while 37% believe it is the Democratic Party.

This 11-point Republican edge is one of the best they have ever had. Looking at 20 midterm elections since 1946 when this question was asked, only once has the Republican Party had a larger advantage on this question. That was in 1946 when Republicans had a 17 point lead on the Democrats.

Republicans had a net gain of 55 House seats in the 1946 election. And while the correlation is far from perfect (+0.7 on a scale of -1 to 1) between House seats won by the Republican Party and how they stood against the Democrats on the most important issue question, it is very much existent.

In these circumstances, it’s not imprudent to think outcomes in most of the “toss up” races could end up tilting red on Election Day. The enthusiasm gap is strong for Republicans and the motivation to vote against Biden is palpable. It’s true that the party in power usually loses seats, that’s the norm. The question is how big will the losses be for Democrats and how far will the red wave crest in carrying districts that typically swing left-of-center?

Biden’s approval is indeed a dark sign for his party, but so is just about every other polling indicator as well.