Biden is unpopular, but Democrats lead 2022 polls. What gives?

· Leave a Comment

Joe Biden is underwater: 45 percent of voters approve of his job performance as president while 52 percent disapprove, adding up to a net approval rating of negative seven percentage points. Yet Biden isn’t sinking Democratic congressional candidates — they lead Republicans in national House polls by one point.

These numbers, taken from FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, are confusing. Historically, when voters dislike a president, they vent their frustration by voting against his party in Congress. Yet the best measure of whether voters like Biden — his approval rating — seems utterly unrelated to how well House Democrats are polling in the midterm elections.

So, to resolve this conundrum, I tracked what factors led to increases and decreases in Biden’s presidential approval rating, and what events led to changes in national House polls. CONTINUED

David Byler, Washington Post

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Over Half of Americans Disapprove of Supreme Court as Trust Plummets

· Leave a Comment

Trust that the U.S. Supreme Court is operating in the best interests of the American people has plummeted amid growing perceptions that the justices are partisans just like any other politicians, according to the latest Annenberg Public Policy Center survey, which includes questions tracking the court across more than a decade and a half.

The survey, which was conducted in August, two months after the Supreme Court overturned the 49-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling guaranteeing a constitutional right to abortion, finds that 53% of U.S. adults disapprove of how the court handles its job. The survey also reveals a chasm between the qualities the American people say they value most in judges, such as fairness and impartiality, and the traits they perceive in Supreme Court justices. CONTINUED

Annenberg Public Policy Center

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Trust in Government on Foreign Problems Has Mostly Recovered

· Leave a Comment

Americans’ trust in the federal government to handle international problems has mostly recovered from last year’s record-low reading following the United States’ troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The current 45% of U.S. adults who express “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of confidence in the government’s handling of foreign issues is up six percentage points from one year ago, when it fell by nine points.

At the same time, the 40% of Americans with the same degree of trust in the government’s handling of domestic problems is essentially unchanged near the low point for the trend. CONTINUED

Megan Brenan, Gallup

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Why the GOP can’t count on Joe Biden’s low ratings to sink Democrats

· Leave a Comment

We are now under a month until Election Day, and you can feel the midterm campaign really taking hold. From Herschel Walker generating headlines for his troubles in Georgia to the Senate GOP campaign arm cutting bait in New Hampshire, we’re getting down to crunch time.

All of this is happening with President Joe Biden’s approval rating stuck in the low-to-mid 40s. Democratic Senate nominees, though, still seem to be holding leads in a number of important battlegrounds (i.e., Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania) that are key to determining control of the chamber.

So this got me thinking: In an era of high polarization, will Biden sink his party in these key races? A look back through recent history suggests that it may not. CONTINUED

Harry Enten, CNN

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Joe Biden Knows How to Use Donald Trump

· Leave a Comment

… Biden didn’t win the Democratic nomination in 2020 because he was the most thrilling candidate or because he had legions of die-hard supporters. The case most often made for Biden was that other people would find him acceptable. And that proved true. Biden was able to assemble an unusually broad coalition of people who feared Trump and considered Biden to be, eh, fine. …

What was never clear to me was what Biden and the Democrats would do when Trump wasn’t on the ballot — when Biden had to drive Democratic enthusiasm on his own. But Biden is running a surprisingly similar strategy in 2022 to the one he ran in 2020, with some evidence of success. He doesn’t try to command the country’s attention day after day. And that’s left space for Trump and the Supreme Court and a slew of sketchy Republican candidates to make themselves the story and remind Democrats of what’s at stake in 2022. CONTINUED

Ezra Klein, New York Times

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

How much influence does Twitter really wield?

· Leave a Comment

… Overall, only about a quarter of American adults say they ever use Twitter, according to the Pew Research Center. That number is a small fraction of some of the more dominant social media platforms. More than 80% of Americans say they use YouTube and about 70% say they use Facebook. One in 4 Americans say they use Instagram. About 1 in 5 Americans say they use TikTok.

Of course, Twitter reaches a lot more people when snapshots of posts pop up on cable or broadcast television, but that’s not the same as direct contact with users. Usually, there is other editorial context around those on-air posts — sometimes a lot of editorial context.

And beyond the size of Twitter’s audience, there is the question of what “audience” means. The data suggest there are a lot of Americans on the platform primarily in lurker mode. The top 25% of U.S. adult tweeters produce 97% of the tweets. CONTINUED

Dante Chinni, NBC News

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack