Democrats are questioning whether President Joe Biden can lead the party to victory in a 2024 presidential election as his polling collapse continues.
Ten months into office and inflation on the rise, supply chain woes leaving shelves empty, and disappointing economic growth, voters say the country’s future looks bleak. Democratic priorities on immigration and voting rights are stalled. Biden’s promised legislative packages, including a bipartisan infrastructure bill popular with swing-district Democrats and a social spending package, remain stalled.
“People are upset, people are frustrated … Voters see things getting worse,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said while discussing the results of Georgetown University’s latest Battleground and Civility Poll. Lake, a campaign pollster for Biden, collaborated with Republican pollster Ed Goeas.
According to the survey conducted Oct. 16-21, just 28% of voters believe the country is headed in the right direction, with 12% who firmly believe this. On the other hand, 63% said the country is on the wrong track, including a 51% majority who strongly feel this way.
Lake said independent voters, in particular, are “mad at everybody and everything.”
TENSIONS EMERGE BETWEEN BIDEN CLIMATE GOALS AND UYGHUR FORCED LABOR CRACKDOWN
“Americans are dejected about the way things are going in the country,” Lake writes in her report.
Two-thirds of voters expect the next generation to be worse off, with both short- and long-term economic anxiety, a feeling most pronounced among the younger population.
Generation X, ages 41-56, wonder if they will ever achieve stability, Lake said. Millennials, aged between 25-40, and Generation Z, aged 24 and under, wonder what kind of future they will have.
Goeas, a Republican pollster, said voters were digging in on a slew of economic issues, such as inflation and the rising cost of living, and immigration.
But perhaps most concerning for the president is his support eroding with Democratic voters.
In the June Georgetown University Battleground Poll, 94% of Democrats gave Biden a positive rating on his job performance, while only 2% of the party rated the president poorly. Just four months later, Biden’s job approval faces a 10 percentage point haircut, falling to 84%, as the share of people who disapprove of his performance balloons to 14%.
The slippage highlights a broader trend. A RealClearPolitics average of recent polls shows the number of people who think the country is headed in the right direction has collapsed in recent months, falling to 29.3% after a high of 43.8% in April.
Less than one year into office, Biden still has time to turn around his prospects before the next presidential contest, Democratic political consultant Brad Bannon told the Washington Examiner.
“Americans are bent out of shape. The question is what the numbers are going to be a year from now,” particularly if the economy improves and the pandemic recedes, Bannon said.
Still, dissatisfaction with Biden’s handling of kitchen table issues, such as rising prices, may provide an opening for Republicans in the meantime.
According to a new NBC poll, Republicans hold an 18 percentage point advantage on “dealing with the economy,” a partisan lead held only once before by Democrats in January 2008. The poll’s history dates to October 1991.
The fallout is weighing on Democrats’ expectations for the 2024 presidential race.
A plurality of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favor replacing Biden at the top of the presidential ticket in 2024, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll.
Forty-four percent of respondents said Democrats would be more likely to win the White House in 2024 if someone other than Biden were nominated, while 36% said the party would have a better chance of winning if they keep the president at the top of the ticket. Twenty percent said they were unsure.
Among Democrats, 41% said the party should nominate someone else, equal to the share who said Biden should run again.
The poll, conducted between Oct. 18-22, surveyed 1,209 adults nationally with a plus or minus 4 percentage point margin of error. Subsets of 469 Democrats and lean-Democratic independents and 413 Republicans and lean-Republican independents each had a margin of error of plus or minus 6.4 percentage points and plus or minus 6.8 percentage points, respectively.
Goeas of The Tarrance Group, a Republican polling firm, said voters are looking for the president to meet his campaign pledges. He said voters are looking for solutions, “not ideology,” as Biden wrangles a Democratic caucus divided internally between liberal and centrist lawmakers.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
But if Biden’s sweeping legislative agenda succeeds, Democrats’ prospects may rise along with his own.
“Public opinion right now is down on Joe Biden. But the rubber doesn’t start to meet the road for another year in the midterms. And another couple years for the next presidential race,” Bannon said. “What happens between now and then?”
