As I mentioned yesterday in covering Jen Psaki referring to Fox News' Peter Doocy as one who "might... sound like a son of a bitch," President Joe Biden's pollster, John Anzalone. He was the headline of their Friday morning POLITICO Playbook, "Biden’s pollster: 2022 is ‘worst political environment’ of my lifetime." He's on to something, truly, as there are many polls not only highlighting how poorly Biden's approval ratings are overall, but polls highlighting concerns about how he's performing poorly with demographics that Democrats historically do well with.
Earlier this week, I covered how Biden is hemorrhaging support with Hispanics. A Quinnipiac poll released on Wednesday found that the president has just a 26 percent approval rating with Hispanics, while 54 percent disapprove and 20 percent have no opinion.
In a POLITICO piece from earlier on Friday, which covered more of the interview between Anzalone and Ryan Lizza, it is acknowledged that Democrats have been doing poorly with Hispanics, which Anzalone specified was with Hispanic men:
Lizza: Are we seeing racial groups that have a history of voting strongly for Democrats starting to polarize along education lines the same way that white voters have been? And that working-class Latinos, African Americans are?
Anzalone: In our data, it doesn’t matter where we are. It really has more to do with male and female. There’s a huge divide where Latinos are voting or say they’re going to vote, whether you’re a male Latino or a you’re a female Latino.
Lizza: So the Democratic problem was with male Latinos specifically?
Anzalone: Yes. You’re right. And any of our bleed is younger male African Americans. We saw that in 2020 as well. So whether you’re looking at white voters or Latino voters or black voters, quite frankly, you’re seeing a gender difference. And then you’ll see, of course, a college-educated difference, as well. I mean, we do better with college-educated men than non-college-educated men in any of that group. But the male-female split within Latinos is pretty significant.
Anzalone also claimed that they "were raising red flags" and that "the Biden campaign took it very seriously." While a November 12, 2020 report from Nicole Narea for Vox mentioned that "Latinos helped deliver victories that made Joe Biden’s ascent to the presidency possible" and "it’s clear most Latinos voted for Biden," she does also acknowledge that Trump made inroads with Hispanics. Further, her headline warned that "Most Latinos voted for Biden — but 2020 revealed fault lines for Democrats," with the subheadline reading "Democrats often haven’t treated Latinos as persuadable voters."
Almost two years after that presidential election, the situation is getting worse.
And there's another demographic that Lizza and Anzalone did not discuss, which, as Spencer covered earlier this week, is younger voters.
With his 39 percent approval rating among Generation Z, those born 1997-2004 from September 2021-March 2022, Biden has faced a drop of 21 percent, according to a Gallup poll.
@GallupNews : Biden Job Approval Down Most Among Younger Generations, https://t.co/6hEz6TsQKH pic.twitter.com/UNCy9PPVBR
— John McCormick (@McCormickJohn) April 14, 2022
Anzalone did have to offer some hopeful news, which included that "I think we really have the ability to keep the Senate." That being said, there are some predictions that Republicans may gain control of the Senate as well. Currently, Democrats only control the 50-50 Senate because Vice President Kamala Harris serves as a tie-breaking vote.
