CV NEWS FEED // President Joe Biden received a 41% job approval rating last month, marking “the lowest among incumbents in January of an election year” in six decades, according to a recent Gallup poll.
The 41% job approval rating puts Biden “in a precarious spot,” Gallup reported, as previous incumbents with similar ratings have had varied success in getting reelected.
“While the current readings — like presidential job approval, economic confidence and party ID — are not promising for President Joe Biden, history shows these sentiments can improve by Election Day. But they can also stall or worsen,” Gallup wrote in a recent edition of its Front Page weekly newsletter.
The newsletter also highlighted that the previous January of an election year saw a higher percentage of Americans satisfied with the state of the nation. In January of 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic began, 41% of Americans were satisfied with the state of the nation under President Donald Trump. In January of 2024, 20% of Americans were satisfied with the state of the nation and the “direction” it is going.
“Over the past four decades, incumbent presidents have still been reelected when majorities of Americans are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country, but the cutoff seems to be 30% satisfaction,” Gallup noted in its expanded report:
Less than 30% of U.S. adults were satisfied at the time of the 1992 and 2020 elections when the elder Bush and Trump lost, whereas more than 30% were satisfied in the years incumbents won.
This early into the reelection year, it “has not been unusual for incumbents to be below the 50% threshold,” Gallup wrote:
But Biden’s reelection may depend on his ability to boost his numbers close to that threshold, something Clinton, Obama and Richard Nixon were able to do but Trump and Ford were not.
Other presidents, including George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, saw significant declines in approval during their fourth year in office.
Partisanship is “an important indicator of election outcomes” because it “strongly aligns” with how Americans will vote, Gallup noted. The size of a Democratic lead over the Republican party will show whether they “are in a strong or weak position” for an election win.
“A possible silver lining for the Biden campaign,” Gallup noted, “is that Democrats’ party advantage has often increased between January and October or November of an election year. This has occurred in all election years featuring an incumbent since 1992.”
A sharp split in satisfaction ratings, according to Gallup, is whether American citizens say they are “better off now than they were three years ago”. Forty-eight percent of Americans said they are better off now – and 47% said they are not.
The “bottom line,” Gallup wrote, is that “Biden’s reelection chances do not look very favorable in early 2024.”
“His job approval rating is lower than all recent incumbents at the same point, including those who ultimately lost the election, and key national mood indicators are more in line with those for past losers than winners,” the report concluded:
Party identification offers Biden some hope but depends on Democrats making gains rather than holding steady in national support, something that has happened at least slightly in each of the past five incumbent elections.
…Many Americans continue to struggle financially, and Biden has so far been unable to convince voters of the economy’s health or his accomplishments. If he cannot do so by the summer, particularly before the Democratic National Convention, his chances of winning reelection will grow increasingly bleak.
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