More bad approval rating news for Joe Biden: Joe Biden’s approval rating, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average, fell below 40 percent earlier this week for the first time in months, although it has since rebounded slightly.
Joe Biden Needs to Watch the Scary Poll Numbers
As noted by Newsweek this week, President Biden’s average approval rating dropped below 40 percent on July 1, reaching as far down as 39.9 percent. However, the president’s rating has since reached back above 40 percent.
That marked the lowest Biden’s approval rating had gone since it hit 39.6 percent in August of 2022.
The FiveThirtyEight average is assembled by taking into consideration a variety of polls and weighing them.
“Polls within 30 days are considered, but the older the poll is, the less influence it will have on the average, and that decay is pretty significant since both the modeling technique (local polynomial regression) and the averaging of different bandwidths serve to downweight older polls,’ Mary Radcliffe, a senior research assistant at FiveThirtyEight, told Newsweek.
As of July 5, Biden’s approval rating was 40.5 percent, compared to a 54.4 percent disapproval rating. August 2021 was the last time the average showed Biden in positive approval territory.
Also on Wednesday, FiveThirtyEight wrote about why, despite the low approval ratings, it’s unlikely that Biden will face a major primary challenge in 2024. This is normally the case when an incumbent president is in the third year of his first term, but this year’s circumstance is a bit different than most, the site noted.
“President Biden has a lingering cloud of uncertainty hovering over his reelection campaign. He’s fairly well-liked by his own party, but as already the oldest president ever at 80, even many Democrats feel Biden shouldn’t run again. Speculation persists that a high-profile Democrat might decide to take him on, even as alternatives such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker have insisted they have no interest,” FiveThirtyEight said.
“Meanwhile, thanks to his famous name — and conspiratorial views — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has garnered media attention while also climbing into the double digits in Democratic primary polls, which some have taken as evidence that he could mount a real challenge to Biden.”
However, no major elected Democrat has announced, or even hinted at, plans to challenge Biden. Kennedy is running, but it appears the majority of his support comes from figures of the political right. And while Kennedy had managed to gain a great deal of media coverage, he trails Biden by 40-50 points in most polls.
“Kennedy remains unfamiliar to many Democrats, who may be drawn to his revered last name. But he likely has a low ceiling for support because Democrats overall probably won’t find many of his views appealing: This includes his false claims about vaccines, blaming antidepressants for school shootings, and comments claiming Russia acted in “good faith” in its war against Ukraine,” FiveThirtyEight said of the challenger.
Marianne Williamson, who ran for president in 2020, is running again as well on the Democratic side, but Kennedy is running on many of the same issues with which she is associated, At the same time, her campaign has been plagued with internal turmoil.
There is no candidate running against Biden from the left, or seeking to take up the lane that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) held in the Democratic primaries of the 2016 and 2020 Democratic races; Sanders himself endorsed Biden back in April while announcing that he would not be running in 2024. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), another Biden opponent from the 2020 primaries, has also said that she’s not running and is backing Biden.
It would appear that, whether Biden wins or loses in 2024, the next big contested Democratic primary will take place in 2028, with the likes of Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and a large group of Democratic governors — California’s Newsom, Michigan’s Whitmer, Illinois’ Pritzker, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, and possibly others — possibly vying to lead the party in its post-Biden incarnation.
Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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