It's no secret that President Joe Biden has been faring terribly in the polls. Many recent polls show Biden at his record low or tied for it.
Biden's average for RealClearPolitics (RCP) is particularly low, at 38.2 percent, while 57 percent disapprove. FiveThirtyEight has him at a 38.6 percent approval rating, while 56.3 percent disapprove. It gets worse by the day.
Contributing to that low rating is how a Monmouth University poll that was released on Tuesday, which has the president with an approval rating of just 36 percent, his personal low in the poll. A poll release has more details, in that this has been a trend for the president, as he hasn't had a net positive since last July, when it was at 48 percent, while 44 percent disapproved. Biden hasn't had a majority in the Monmouth University poll since April of last year, when he was at 54 percent, and 41 percent disapproved.
There was also another low in this poll, in that just 10 percent of respondents believe in the country is headed in the right direction, compared to 88 percent who say it's on the wrong track. The release notes this is an all-time low for the question going back to 2013. The prior low was also from this year, in May, when 18 percent said it was headed in the right direction and 78 percent said it was on the wrong track.
In part due to the Monmouth poll results, RCP shows an average of just 17.9 percent who say the country is on the right track, while 75.4 percent say it's on the wrong track.
When Fox News' Peter Doocy brought up the 88 percent figure during Wednesday's press briefing, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave a complete and total non-answer about how "the president understands," blaming "Putin's tax hike" and Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Clearly the American people don't think he does understand, though, given those numbers.
DOOCY: Why do you think 88% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track?
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 7, 2022
KJP: "The president understands what the American people are going through. He understands that gas prices are high because of Putin's tax hike." pic.twitter.com/ip77lElfnU
It's in light of these catastrophic poll numbers that CNN's Chris Cillizza wondered on Wednesday "How low can Joe Biden go in the polls?" In his analysis, Cillizza looks to the Gallup Presidential Center to see the lowest approval ratings for each president since Harry Truman, noting that the average lowest approval rating was 33 percent.
When it comes to Gallup, I covered last month how a poll from May led to the headline that "Usual Midterm Indicators Very Unfavorable for Democrats,"with the write-up for Gallup mentioning that "the current Democratic congressional majority is facing an extremely unfavorable election environment."
The poll goes in depth as to how by every single metric, Biden and the Democrats have the lowest rankings in modern history, or close to it. "On their own, those numbers would all predict a greater-than-average loss of seats for the Democratic Party this fall," the write-up mentions.
Gallup consistently has had Biden at a 41 percent approval rating, which is certainly higher than other polls.
Cillizza warns that Biden's approval ratings could actually get lower, which he notes should send Democrats into a "further panic," especially when it comes to November. He explains:
What does all of that tell us?
That there's a possibility that Biden's numbers go lower.
The presidents whose approval ratings are below where Biden is today were battered by a series of crises on a variety of fronts. Which, well, seems to fit Biden. He continues to struggle amid the public's concerns over inflation, gas prices and the (still) ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
That's not to say that Biden isn't at his bottom now, but just rather to note that the factors that have driven past presidents' approval ratings lower do exist for him at the moment.
That all should result in further panic running through the Democratic Party. The single biggest predictor of how a president's party will do in a midterm election is what that president's approval looks like. As of 2018, the average House seat loss when a president's job approval is below 50% is 37 seats, according to Gallup. (When a president is over 50% approval, the average seat loss for his party is 14 seats.)
So while it remains to be seen if Biden will keep sinking or whether his numbers will stabilize somewhat, it's already clear that he is very, very likely to be a drag on the Democrats in four months' time.
The Monmouth poll numbers are also referenced in Cillizza's latest analysis, who aptly points out that "Joe Biden can't catch a break." It's not just the poll numbers, though.
Cillizza also highlights the recent announcement that Communications Director Kate Bedingfield is leaving the Biden White House, and some less than favorable news coverage from mainstream news outlets, including those normally friendly to Democrats, such as The Washington Post, CNN, and POLITICO.
"All of those stories, perhaps not by accident, come as Biden's poll numbers continue to sink. A recent Monmouth University survey pegged his job approval rating among Americans at a meager 36%, the lowest point the poll had measured of his presidency," Cillizza wrote.
He ends his piece on a rather pessimistic note:
So, Biden is frustrated because the message is bad and chaotic. He lashes out at staff for it. That makes them more likely to leave. Which creates a bad and chaotic messaging department. It's a vicious circle.
If you want to look on the brightest side for Biden, you can make the case that Biden has a messaging problem -- not organized or urgent enough -- and that the departures of senior communications strategists is addition by subtraction.
I mean, maybe? But the overall impression created at the moment by the Biden White House is listless and lost. And that's never a good look.
Cillizza has written before about how Biden's low approval ratings could likely spell doom for the Democrats.
Republicans are largely predicted to win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and some say they may win back the U.S. Senate as well.
As Matt bluntly put it in his piece earlier on Thursday, "Only an Act of God Can Spare Democrats of Their 2022 Misery."
