Roughly Half Of Americans Approve Of What Biden Has Done So Far
About half of Americans 49 percent said they approve of how Biden has served as president so far, less than two months into his presidency, according to the latest poll. But as was the case with his predecessor, whose last year in office was marred by the pandemic, much of that support comes from people who identify as members of his own party. Among Democrats, Bidens approval rating was 87 percent. But only 11 percent of Republicans and43 percent of independents said they approved of the president.
Chart by Megan McGrew/PBS NewsHour
Another 42 percent of Americans disapprove of what Biden has done so far as president, including 81 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of independents.
Still, Biden currently has a higher job approval rating than former President Donald Trump ever reached during his four years in the White House, according to Marist polling data. And support for Biden seems to be growing. In this latest poll, 52 percent of Americans said they had a favorable impression of him. Thats up from 41 percent in October 2019 in the midst of Trumps first impeachment. Since then, Biden has inched up in favorability.
Republicans in Congress face steeper job disapproval, with 64 percent of Americans saying they do not like what they are seeing, an increase of 6 percentage points over January 2019, including 38 percent of Republicans and 85 percent of Democrats.
Trump Viewed Favorably By More In Iowa Gop Than Chuck Grassley
Trump has always been a polarizing figure in the state the percentage of all Iowans who viewed him favorably topped 50% only once before in polls dating to January 2018. That was in March 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to surge in the U.S.
But he has maintained popularity among Iowa Republicans throughout his time in office, and the vast majority continue to view him favorably.
According to the Registers Iowa Poll, 91% of Iowa Republicans have a favorable view of him and just 7% view him unfavorably. Another 2% are not sure.
Those marks put Trump in league with Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is viewed favorably by 90% of Iowa Republicans. And it surpasses Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is viewed favorably by 81% of Iowans.
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I did not foresee the day when Donald Trump would be 10 points more popular with Iowa Republicans than the venerable Chuck Grassley, said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co.
That Republican goodwill contrasts with Democrats feelings for Trump, 99% of whom view him unfavorably. Just 1% view him favorably.
Independent Iowans are nearly evenly split, with 48% viewing him favorably and 49% viewing him unfavorably. Another 3% are unsure.
In The Real Polls Were Doing Very Well
July 12, 2020 at 7:48 am EDT By Taegan Goddard
President Trumps management of this summers crises has triggered what Democrats detect as a tectonic shift in the political landscape, with party leaders suddenly bullish about not only taking back the White House but also wresting control of the Senate, as well as expanding their House majority, the Washington Post reports.
Trumps incumbent advantages have steadily eroded since the spring, with the president now trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in virtually every public poll nationally and in battleground states, as well as lagging behind the former vice president in fundraising for May and June.
Trump and his advisers insist that their campaigns internal data show the race as more competitive In the real polls, we are doing very well, the president claimed Friday and that he can gain momentum in the weeks ahead with a disciplined message and a brutal, sustained assault on Bidens character, ideology and mental acuity.
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Trump Does Especially Well With Vaccine
The poll results show Trump does especially well among people who have not been vaccinated and do not intend to be vaccinated, Selzer said.
He is viewed favorably by 86% of Iowans who say they are not vaccinated and do not plan to become vaccinated.
Thats on par with Reynolds, who also is viewed favorably by 86% of vaccine-resistant Iowans. But far fewer vaccine-resistant Iowans view the states two Republican senators favorably. Sixty percent of those who are not vaccinated and do not plan to become vaccinated view Grassley favorably, and 67% view U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst favorably.
Trump has been vaccinated, but he did so in private and he said in a September interview with the Wall Street Journal that he is unlikely to get the booster shot authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for those 65 and older and for people with weakened immune systems.
He has publicly touted the aggressive timeline during which the vaccines were developed while he was in office. But at an August rally in Alabama, he was briefly booed for urging his supporters to get the shot.
You got to do what you have to do, but I recommend: Take the vaccines, he said at the rally. I did it its good.
Reynolds, Grassley and Ernst all have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and have publicly recommended that others do the same. But they and Trump have all drawn a firm line when it comes to any kind of vaccine mandate.
Its The Pandemic Stupid
What new polls reveal about American priorities
Losing a war undermines the publics trust in any leader. But the setback causing the most damage to Joe Bidens political standing likely isnt the U.S. military defeat in Afghanistanits the frustrating home-front struggle against the resurgent coronavirus pandemic.
Support for Bidens performance as president has tumbled in the most recent batch of polling. For the first time since he took office, a higher percentage of people disapprove of the job hes doing than approve, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Yesterday, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll found his approval rating at 41 percenta dismal showing more commonly associated with Bidens unpopular predecessor, Donald Trump, who never won the support of a majority of voters.
A closer look at these surveys, however, suggests that the largerand, for Biden, potentially more worrisomefactor in his declining support remains the pandemic. The NBC poll asked respondents what they considered the most important issue facing the country the coronavirus was the top choice, while Afghanistan didnt even make the list. The public also still supports Bidens decision to withdraw American forces, recent surveys show. Simon Jaworski, the president of the U.S. office of Leger, which regularly conducts polls for The Atlantic, told me that Bidens approval rating in its surveys had fallen significantly in the month before the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan.
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All Being Said Trump Is Doing Well In Polls
Donald Trumps Approval Rating Surpasses Obamas, Not Just on Rasmussen Reports . President Donald Trumps job approval rating this week averaged across major polls surpassed that of his predecessor President Barack Obama at the same time eight years ago.
Pres. Trump approval back up to pre-COVID shutdown high of 52%: poll
Majority Of Americans Support $15 Minimum Wage Reuters/ipsos Poll Shows
A majority of Americans support the idea of more than doubling the minimum wage to $15 per hour, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Thursday as Senate Democrats await a ruling on whether they can tuck that measure into a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill.
A slim majority of Americans say former President Donald Trump should be convicted by the Senate of inciting an insurrection and barred from holding public office, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, which showed a sharp partisan divide over the issue.
Fifty-seven percent of Americans want Republican President Donald Trump to be immediately removed from office after he encouraged a protest this week that escalated into a deadly riot inside the U.S. Capitol, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
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Trump Vows Primary Battles Against Pro
The outrage over Donald Trumps not a hero comments about Sen. John McCain is not hurting him with voters, according to two new polls.
One survey puts Trump in second place in Iowa, while a second shows The Donald holding on to a large lead nationally even after the McCain barbs.
The polls were conducted on the same weekend that Trump slammed the Arizona senator as not a hero despite the fact that the he was tortured during the more than five years he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Trump had 13 percent support among Republican voters in Iowa early last weekend, before his McCain quote, a Monmouth University poll showed.
And that support held steady later in the weekend, after the remarks were reported, the pollsters said.
The poll found that Trump was second in Iowa only to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who had 22 percent.
The New York real-estate developer holds a 47 percent favorable rating in Iowa, which is better than the 40 percent rating he received from national Republicans last week, the poll showed.
Meanwhile, a Washington Post-ABC News poll that was conducted beginning on Thursday shows Trump held the lead for the GOP nomination nationally with 24 percent almost twice the support of his closest rival, Walker.
The Post-ABC survey showed a drop in support for Trump on the night his McCain comments were made but it was not enough to stop him from taking first place.
Walker had 13 percent and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had 12 percent.
Biden Leading National Presidential Polls
National polls are a good guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, but they’re not necessarily a good way to predict the result of the election.
In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton led in the polls and won nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump, but she still lost – that’s because the US uses an electoral college system, so winning the most votes doesn’t always win you the election.
With that caveat aside, Joe Biden has been ahead of Donald Trump in most national polls since the start of the year. He has hovered around 50% in recent months and has had a 10-point lead on occasions.
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Why The Polls Were Off
1) Who’s answering their phones
The polls this year were overwhelmingly off in Biden’s favor. That indicates the error was systematic and not random.
“It’s safe to say that we don’t have enough Republicans in our samples,” said Cliff Zukin, a retired professor of political science at Rutgers University who worked in the polling industry for four decades.
To start to explain this, one possibility is partisan non-response.
The Pew Research Center reported in 2019 that the response rate to its phone polls had dropped to 6%, from 36% in 1997. Cellphones and caller ID have a lot to do with this, as many people don’t answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize.
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Certain types of people are also more likely to answer their phones than others. Combine that with shifting partisan alignments among particular demographics, and it can throw polls off.
“You almost always have too many college graduates who took the survey because they’re just more amenable to doing it,” said Courtney Kennedy, director of survey research at the Pew Research Center. “And in this political era, that’s correlated with support for Democrats.”
It’s also possible that Trump supporters are uniquely averse to answering polls, said Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics.
“The No. 1 prediction of being a Trump supporter was agreeing with the statement, ‘People like me don’t have much say in this country,’ ” Trende said. “And those are the exact people that when you hear a phone call and the person says, ‘Hi, I’m from The New York Times. Would you take a call?’ just go .”
On top of that, it’s possible that Democrats were especially likely to answer polls this year, as they both were enthusiastic about defeating Trump and isolated themselves at home, David Shor recently told Vox’s Dylan Matthews.
“So the basic story is that, particularly after COVID-19, they were donating at higher rates, etc., and this translated to them also taking surveys, because they were locked at home and didn’t have anything else to do.”
1.5) Weighting
2) What makes a “likely voter”?
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Familiar Demographic Divides In Vote Preferences
In the final weeks leading up to Election Day, Biden holds a 10 percentage point lead over Trump among registered voters in the presidential race . Many of the demographic patterns of support for both candidates are similar to those in the 2016 presidential contest.
Just as was the case four years ago, there is a sizable gender gap in candidate preference: Women voters continue to favor the Democratic candidate for president by 17 percentage points . This is roughly on par with 2016.
In contrast, men are divided. Today, 49% favor Biden while 45% favor Trump. In 2016, men favored Trump by modest margins in preelection polls, as well as among validated 2016 voters.
There are also sizable gaps by race and ethnicity. White voters prefer Trump to Biden , though Biden is faring slightly better among White voters in the current race relative to Hillary Clinton in 2016.
And the sizable Democratic advantages among Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters are just as large for Biden as they were in 2016. Biden currently leads Black voters by 81 percentage points, Hispanic voters by 34 points and Asian voters by 53 points. Note: Surveys are conducted in English and Spanish.
Education is also a dividing line among White voters: College-educated White voters favor Biden by 21 percentage points, while those without a college degree favor Trump by a similar margin.
Multiple States Hold Key Primaries As Coronavirus Pandemic Floyd Protests Continue
WASHINGTON On the day of George Floyd’s funeral in Houston and as coronavirus cases continue to rise, several states are holding primaries to determine which candidates will represent their parties come November.
Here are the races the NBC News political unit are paying closest attention to:
Georgia Senate: The top primary contest to watch is in Georgia, where several Democrats are running for the right to challenge Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., in the fall.
The favorite in this Democratic primary is 2017 congressional nominee, Jon Ossoff, and his top challengers are former Columbus Mayor Teresa Tomlinson and businesswoman Sarah Riggs Amico. The Cook Political Report lists the race as Lean Republican for November.
If none of the candidates break 50 percent, the Top 2 will advance to an Aug. 11 runoff.
South Carolina Senate: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Democrat Jaime Harrison receive nominal primary opposition ahead of their expected November showdown in the Palmetto State. Harrison has raked in significant fundraising ahead of today’s contest.
Nevada 3rd District: Republicans will pick their nominee in Nevada to face Democratic Congresswoman Susie Lee, D-Nev., in the competitive Nevada district.
Nevada 4th District: Also in Nevada, incumbent Democratic Rep. Steven Horsford, who recently admitted to having an affair with a former Senate staffer, is receiving a primary challenge from multiple Democrats, as well as Republicans who are trying to reclaim the seat.
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