As we approach the November election, now just a little over nine months away, President Joe Biden continues to be in a sorry state against former and potentially future President Donald Trump. We've discussed before how the election will likely come down to certain battleground states, states where Trump continues to lead. Earlier this week, Guy highlighted polling showing that Trump is leading in all of them, in fact. There's even more where that came from, though, especially when it comes to Biden's approval ratings and the people who believe he deserves to be reelected, or lack thereof.
In addition to the polls that Guy highlighted--yes, these are new ones from those above--there's also a poll from Gallup that Mike Miller at our sister site of RedState pointed to.
The poll shows that just 38 percent of voters think Biden "deserves" another term, while 61 percent do not. Just 1 percent have no opinion on the matter. Only 24 percent think that "Most members of Congress" deserve another term, while 55 percent say the member in their own district do. That could raise concerns for the particularly slim Republican majority in the House, but that's another complicated matter.
As Miller noted, this is even more concerning than Biden's 41 percent approval rating.
Only members of Congress not in one's own district ranked lower than the embattled president. pic.twitter.com/hI46moUdNI
— MikesRight (@RealLibSmacker) February 2, 2024
Some notable findings include how Biden isn't doing too well with Independents, a voting demographic that was key to him winning in 2020.
"As would be expected, the vast majority of Democratic registered voters (82%) versus few Republican voters (3%) believe Biden should be reelected. At 29%, independent voters’ support for a second Biden term is much closer to that of Republicans than Democrats," Gallup noted.
Another addresses how "Biden in Relatively Weak Position Compared With Prior Incumbents," though at the same time the write-up tried to somewhat tone down concerns facing Biden. "Biden can take some solace in the fact that voter sentiment about whether a president deserves reelection has often changed over the course of prior election years," the write-up read.
This serves as a crucial reminder that Republicans can't afford to get too cocky or take anything for granted ahead of November.
The poll was conducted January 2-22 with 1,011 adults, including 890 registered voters, for which there is a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
It's not just the polls saying so. Pollster Frank Luntz addressed Biden's grim chances in a candid conversation while on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
Emphasizing "I've never been more serious in my life" about the 2024 election, Luntz went on to say that
"the weakest candidate against Donald Trump is Joe Biden," noting any other Democrat would be beating Trump, but "Joe Biden is falling further and further behind." This is while Trump's numbers are going up, even with the indictments against him.
When addressing "why," Luntz offered that "the public is coming to a conclusion that Joe Biden cannot take this country forward and he seems to be ignoring that conclusion, is determined to run, and frankly... if this continues, Donald Trump is the next president."
I talked to @SquawkCNBC this morning about why Biden consistently trails Trump in polls – and which key 2020 voters he's losing in 2024. https://t.co/tiBFkBALYZ
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) February 2, 2024
The Hill also highlighted comments made by Luntz comparing Biden to Jimmy Carter, the fellow Democratic president who has been compared to Biden at length. When he ran for reelection in 1980, he lost in an epic landslide to Ronald Reagan.
"Make no mistake, Joe Biden is the weakest incumbent in America since Jimmy Carter in 1980. And don’t forget, on the Thursday before the election, Carter was dead even with Ronald Reagan. After their one debate, Reagan beat Jimmy Carter by nine points. This is a look into the future," Luntz also said.
It certainly isn't just Luntz making such a comparison, which we've been hearing about from the start of Biden's presidency, though especially now that he's officially running for reelection.
Last July, CNN's "Smerconish" discussed a write-up from Yahoo! News on bad polling for Biden. "At this point in his term — about 910 days in — Joe Biden is the second-most-unpopular president in modern U.S. history," Smerconish highlighted, reading from Andrew Romano's article. Carter was more unpopular, with a 29 percent approval rating at that point in 1979 compared to Biden's 39 percent approval rating.
As Leah highlighted last week, another Gallup poll showed that only Carter had a worse third-year approval rating when it comes to the presidents going back to Dwight Eisenhower. Biden was at 39.8 percent compared to Carter's 37.4 percent.
Trump still has to formally win the nomination against former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, though, and she has looked to highlight the frontrunner's vulnerabilities. A press release of hers from Thursday noted that "Democrats Couldn’t Dream Up a Weaker General Election Candidate Than Donald Trump."
There's mention of a Quinnipiac University poll which shows Trump losing 44 percent to Biden's 50 percent, while Haley leads 47 percent to Biden's 42 percent. Biden does better against Haley when Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy is factored in.
The press release also touches upon what Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is trying to earn Trump more support among black votes, has criticzed. For instance, it warns that "Donald Trump’s decline blunts Republicans’ potent argument against Joe Biden" and "Donald Trump is unhinged."
"That’s why [Trump] doesn’t want to debate Nikki Haley. That’s why nearly 70% of Americans don’t want a Trump-Biden rematch," the press release notes. That may be the case, but it looks like that's the rematch they're going to get.
Should Democrats end up going with a different candidate, and there's certainly buzz around former First Lady Michelle Obama, she'd definitely have a point. But for now, at least, Biden still insists he's running for reelection.
RealClearPolling currently shows Trump up by +1.8, with 46.6 percent to Biden's 44.8 percent.
