A raft of new polls in recent weeks have shown slippage in Joe Biden’s standing with the public. To name just four: Gallup, Pew, AP-NORC, and Quinnipiac have all shown deterioration since the summer in perceptions of his performance. The president’s standing among his fellow Democrats remains strong, but he has lost significant ground among independents. To take one example, Gallup had the president at 61% approval in late-January among self-identified independents; it is now 37%.
There’s a lot of time for Biden to recover before his party faces voters in the 2022 midterms, but it is always harder to raise one’s standing than to have it go down. There is one set of responses in these recent polls, however, that might make this harder to do; Biden’s standing on many personal traits has also taken a big hit of late.
During the 2020 campaign, Biden was seen as the nice guy in contrast to some of his harder-edged opponents in the primaries and then to Donald Trump in the general. Many thought Biden would bring calm to Washington and end the Twitter storms that Trump stirred up. Unlike many other politicians, Biden was generally seen as likeable even if you didn’t agree with him. But these positive perceptions have eroded over the last several weeks.
Let’s look first at Quinnipiac’s early October poll. (Their mid-October poll did not update these questions.) In April, 52% said President Biden had good leadership skills; that’s 41% in the early October poll. In the earlier poll, 58% said he cared about average Americans. In early October, people were divided, 49% said he cares, while 48% said he doesn’t. In April, 51% said he was honest. Forty-four percent said he was in early October.
In Pew’s March poll, 62% said Biden cared about the needs of ordinary people. In their recent poll from mid-September, 53% gave that response. His rating on honesty dropped from 57% to 50%. And he dropped ten points on being a good role model in the same period, from 58% to 48%. Finally, in March, 54% said the president was mentally sharp. Forty-four percent in the September poll said this, with declines among both Democrats and Republicans. Eighty-six percent of Democrats said he was mentally sharp in the spring; 73% of them say that now.
In the late January–early February Economist/YouGov online poll, 43% said Biden was honest and trustworthy. In their latest poll fielded October 16–19, 39% give that response. In the earlier poll, 43% said they liked him a lot or somewhat. Now, that is 38%. At the beginning of the year, 51% said Biden was a very or somewhat strong leader; 43% say he is a strong leader today.
How important are the ratings on the president’s personal traits? Performance matters most in judging a president. But high personal regard can cushion the impact of performance problems. Biden’s favorability ratings are still stronger than many other politicians in Congress.
It’s no secret that President Biden is going through an especially rough patch right now, but things could still turn around before the midterms. The president could regain his standing on handling COVID if new cases continue to decline and the country gets back on its feet again. A big win on the hard and soft infrastructure proposals could reverse the more negative perceptions of his leadership that these new polls have shown. We’re still more than a year out from the November 2022 elections, and no one knows what issues we will be talking about next year. Of course, the possibility also exists that things could get worse for the president. Still, the across-the-board declines on Biden’s performance and personality are real, and they will be hard to reverse. The White House needs to be worried about both.
