(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
How on Earth Can Voters Think Trump Accomplished More Than Biden? [1]
['Timothy Noah', 'Aaron R. Hanlon', 'Matt Ford', 'Tori Otten', 'Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling']
Date: 2023-09-07
One knock against Messina’s “they’ll come around” advice is that tracking polls don’t provide much comfort on this point. Biden’s approval numbers, both overall and specifically on the economy, are up since May, according to the AP, but not by much. Biden’s gone from 40 percent overall approval to 42 percent; on the economy, from 33 percent approval to 36 percent. Gallup dates rising approval for Bidenomics a little earlier, from March, but the rise is a similarly poky 32 percent to 37 percent. If Biden continues at this rate, then by next June his approval rating on the economy will be 43 or 44 percent, which is still pretty anemic.
My own best guess for why voters are being stingy with Biden comes down to four factors, three of which I’ve written about before.
The first is that when you ask a voter how the economy is doing, they’re liable to translate that to “Which candidate do you prefer?” In 2016, Gallup asked voters how the economy was doing one week before the November presidential election and one week after. One week before, only 16 percent of Republicans said it was improving; one week after, 49 percent said it was improving. In the interim, Donald Trump was elected president, against all expectations, and Democratic President Barack Obama became a lame duck. It was therefore no surprise to find in July that 71 percent of Democrats approved of how Biden was handling inflation as against 5 percent of Republicans.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://newrepublic.com/article/175420/wsj-poll-trump-biden-economy
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
