The numbers are looking a little better for President Joe Biden: Inflation is down, though still high, and jobs are up despite shrinking gross domestic product. This has translated into a slight uptick in his approval ratings, with the last three national polls showing him out of the 30s, even if he’s still just below 40% in the RealClearPolitics average.
“Today, we received news that our economy had 0% inflation,” Biden declared Wednesday in a technically true but highly misleading statement.
Barring a significant change in the cost of living, that’s only going to take Biden and down-ballot Democrats so far.
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The president’s job approval ratings have been low for a year, predating inflation running at a 41-year high. His economic approval ratings specifically, still 33.4% in the RealClearPolitics average, have been low for almost as long.
YouGov’s last two polls rating Biden’s economic performance have pegged him at 40%. That still puts him at negative 13 points in the most recent survey and negative 15 in the previous one. Sandwiched in between them was a Politico poll that found 34% approved of Biden’s handling of the economy and 61% disapproved, a gap of 27 points.
But Biden’s handling of the economy became unpopular when GDP was growing robustly rather than contracting, recession or not. It became unpopular when inflation was still running below 8.5% year to year. The connection between those statistics and Biden’s economic approval ratings is tenuous, though if they get worse as the Federal Reserve continues to try to wring inflation out of the economy, his numbers could get worse too.
Biden also faces a messaging challenge: To the extent numbers on gas prices and inflation improve, he must tout the relief to consumers and boost public confidence. At the same time, these prices remain high, and there are nonenergy sectors in which inflation, low year to year only compared to a four-decade high, isn’t letting up at all. The price hikes are gobbling up wage growth.
The White House has frequently said that voters don’t measure the health of the economy by abstractions or statistics. When Jen Psaki was Biden’s press secretary, she told reporters that “our measure of success is really how real working families are doing, whether they have a little breathing room, whether they have a job that delivers some dignity and a paycheck they can support a family on.”
A lot of voters remain apprehensive about the economy and are experiencing a high cost of living. Polling about the direction of the country remains abysmal. YouGov recently found that only 20% of registered voters thought it was moving in the right direction, compared to 70% who said it was on the wrong track, a gulf of 50 points.
If Biden’s team talks up the economy too much, they risk looking out of touch.
The other challenge for Biden is avoiding being seen as opportunistic. When inflation goes up, the White House blames other factors. When it goes down, they credit Biden’s economic policies. When the economy expands, it is proof Biden is succeeding in growing the economy from the middle out. When it contracts, it is no reflection of Biden’s policies.
All presidents do this. They also receive credit when the economy is good and blame when it is bad, regardless of the underlying reasons. Biden is old enough to remember Bill Clinton being elected president in 1992 by campaigning against a recession that technically ended in March 1991 — almost four months before he announced his candidacy.
But the monthly price fluctuations make this Biden tendency especially noticeable. One month, the White House talks about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s price hike. The next month, when things are a little better, the focus is on Biden delivering results for the public, to be followed by the return of Putin’s price hike or domestic price gouging if there is any subsequent backsliding.
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Modest improvements in either the economy or Biden’s numbers could benefit Democrats on the ballot this year. Several Democrats in high-profile Senate races are running well ahead of Biden’s approval rating in their states, including Pennsylvania and Georgia. The Democrats are doing better in the generic congressional ballot, which tests which party voters prefer for control of Congress, than Biden is doing in his job approval.
The bottom line remains that Biden’s economic woes have been more enduring than slight variations in important statistics and may require a more drastic turnaround to change.
