Biden’s Hope & Change

Professional Democrats are split between those with a near-religious conviction that Biden’s problems are overblown, and those who believe the freakout is justified. The polling is hard to wish away, but focus group testing suggests the reality isn’t so simple, either.

If your eyes are glazing over from reading all these numbers, here’s what you need to know: The trend lines over the last two months are clear—and dire for Biden. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Peter Hamby

December 11, 2023

Another week, another series of dreadful polls for Joe Biden. The latest round started over the weekend with a Wall Street Journal poll showing Biden’s approval rating at just 37 percent—a new low—and Donald Trump beating him by four points next year in a hypothetical rematch that few voters actually want. The WSJ poll also showed Biden losing to Trump on a range of issues—inflation, crime, border security, the war in Gaza—with Trump outrunning the president on the economy by a devastating 18 points. Today, less than 30 percent of Americans have a positive view of “Bidenomics.”

Democrats were met with more aneurysm-inducing data on Monday. A pair of polls from CNN showed Biden losing to Trump by four points in Georgia and a dizzying 10 points in Michigan (caveat: not even the Trump campaign thinks Biden would ever lose Michigan by that much). Emerson College has Biden losing to Trump by four—and by even more with outsider candidates like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the mix. And more bad news for Joe: A Monmouth poll showed that Trump’s 2020 supporters are more motivated to stick with him next year than Biden’s supporters are.