– President Joe Biden waves as he boards Air Force One for a trip to South Korea and Japan, on May 19, 2022, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md.
AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe
August has seen Biden’s polling average on an upswing.
Biden’s favorability has gradually deteriorated over his presidency.
That trend has now reversed, and his August wins seem to be responsible.
President Joe Biden just got a big polling bump.
After favorability polling that languished in the low forties for nearly a year now, Biden enjoyed a surprise upswing in August. It comes at a critical juncture for the 79-year old president and his party, with the midterm elections just over two months away and nonstop questions about whether he should take a pass on a reelection bid.
The latest data point comes from the blue-chip poll run by Gallup, which has been gauging the favorability of American presidents since the Truman administration. According to them, Biden hit a term-low favorability of just 38% in July, the latest in a line of gradually declining polls. That poll, run from July 5 to 26, painted a dire picture for the president just as his legislative agenda appeared to be on life support in the Senate.
Gallup’s polling for the month of August, a survey which ran from August 3 to August 21, put his favorability at 44%, still slightly underwater but nevertheless a striking increase of 6 percentage points in a month. That kind of volatility is remarkable.
However, August was a remarkable month for Biden.
Gallup
On the second day of the month, his administration announced it had successfully killed the leader of al-Qaeda in a drone strike. On August 7, the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a long-awaited climate and health care bill that looked dead in the water as recently as July. And just this past week, the administration announced a student loan forgiveness executive order that will see qualifying borrowers see $10,000 in loan forgiveness, $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
Indeed, if the polling swing is related to the successful IRA legislative package that was actually signed by the president on August 16, only about a third of Gallup’s sample responded after that signature. This might just be the start of the upswing.
That said, Gallup is hardly alone here: FiveThirtyEight’s approval tracker for Biden, which aggregates just under 40 polls taken entirely in August, shows a distinct reversal of fortune for the president. According to their polling average, Biden’s approval bottomed out on July 21 at 37.5% approval, 57.2% disapproval.
FiveThirtyEight
As of the most recent average on August 26, 41.6% approve while 53.6% disapprove. That’s a four-point upswing in as many weeks, and the kind of momentum Biden and Democrats desperately need to avoid a blowout in November.
Perhaps most encouraging for the Democrats is where this support is coming from. There’s a world in which this bump is merely the result of Biden-skeptical Democrats who would never have otherwise considered backing Republicans in November and are merely coming home after a successful month for the party’s priorities.
This isn’t the case. It’s from Independents.
Gallup
In July, just 31% of political independents had a favorable view of Biden. That jumped 9 percentage points in August to 40%.
The Gallup poll data crosstabs are also confirmed by Morning Consult polling that’s found the same result. In their August 2022 poll, Biden’s approval among registered voters was 43%, up six points from 37% in July.
Who drove that? Independents. Among that group of voters, Biden’s favorability rose six points from 27% in July to 33% in August. That poll was taken from August 19 to 21, so would likely capture the recent legislative success.
There’s also evidence it’s because of the IRA. In Morning Consult’s July poll, 38% of registered voters — and 33% of independents — approved of Biden’s handling of climate change. As of August, that jumped eight points to 46% of voters, and 41% of independents. A similar, but slightly less pronounced, upswing was also seen on the issues of health care and jobs, each covered in some capacity in the IRA.
Biden is still underwater — his disapproval exceeds his approval both overall and among independents — but for the first time in his administration his polling numbers actually seem to be coming up for air.