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UNDER BIDEN, A DRAMATIC CHANGE IN THE POLLS. It’s the most commonly-asked question in political polling: In general, would you say things in the country are headed in the right direction, or do you think they’re on the wrong track? Americans in recent years have mostly said things were on the wrong track, to varying degrees.
They still do, but the numbers are changing pretty dramatically. RealClearPolitics keeps an average of polls on the right track-wrong track question, and on January 18, it showed that 70.2 percent of Americans said the country was on the wrong track, versus 20.7 percent who said it was on the right track — a different of 49.5 percentage points.
Now, that 49.5 point difference has shrunk to a mere 8.2 points — a huge drop. In the latest RCP average, 51.5 percent of those polled said things are on the wrong track, while 43.3 percent said things are on the right track. The 8.2-point difference is the smallest in more than a decade.
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Why isn’t the Biden White House crowing about this? I don’t know. But whatever the reason, the numbers indicate a significant change for the better in the national mood.
Go backward through the numbers. In late February 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic struck, 54.0 percent said the country was on the wrong track, versus 39.8 who said it was on the right track — a 14.2-percentage point difference. That was actually pretty good, and at the brief moment, the re-election prospects for President Donald Trump seemed fairly bright. At another point in the Trump presidency, the numbers were better — a 10.1-point gap in August 2018 between the 51.4 percent who said the country was on the wrong track versus 41.3 percent who said it was on the right track.
For his part, President Barack Obama experienced some huge gaps in the numbers. In October 2013, 74.9 percent said the country was on the wrong track, versus 17.4 percent who said it was on the right track — a 57.5-point difference. In October 2011, 76.5 said wrong track, versus 17.0 who said right track — a 59.5 percent difference.
Obama’s lows were lower than Trump’s ever were. But his highs were higher, and for a very, very brief moment in 2009, the number of people who thought the country was on the wrong track — 48.5 percent — was exactly equal to the number who thought it was on the right track. It has never been better since.
But the movement in recent weeks is the most dramatic in a long time. Under President Joe Biden, the number of people who say the country is on the wrong track has plummeted, while the number of people who say the country is on the right track has shot upward. That will change — it always does — but Biden is definitely enjoying a moment of national approval.
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