Four Indicators of the Political Winds Today

As speculation begins to take place regarding the political landscape and what might occur in the 2022 midterms, I thought it a good moment after nearly 150 days of the Biden Presidency to see where we are politically. Let’s look at four critical data points that will give us a read on today and might begin to suggest a hint of what might be ahead in the next year or so.

1. Though Biden’s presidential job approval began relatively low from a historical perspective (though significantly higher than former President Trump’s approval), his net approval rating has been quite durable over his first five months in office. Biden has seen no significant drop in his net rating since he was inaugurated, and this is very different from every other President in the last 30 years. Trump started his presidency with a net approval of -2 and fell to -18 (a drop of 16 points) at this same point in his presidency. Obama began his term in office with a net approval of +56, and fell to +28 (a drop of 28 points), and kept falling into negative territory by the 2010 midterms. George W. Bush began with a net approval of +32 and fell to +20 (a drop of 12 points) at this point. Clinton began at +38 and fell to -2 net approval after five months and he too was in negative zone at 1994 midterms. Biden began at +15 net approval and is at +15 net approval today.
2. A president’s job approval rating is not only the most significant data point for his or her re-elect, but it is a key factor in whether or not the incumbent president’s party will lose seats in the midterm. In the last thirty years, there has only been two times a president has gone into a midterm with a positive net job approval rating — in 1998 for Clinton and in 2002 for Bush. And in both cases their party, bucking normal historical midterm trends, picked up seats in the House. If Biden continues to maintain his stable job approval rating and ends up in 2022 with a positive net approval, it is a good sign for Democrats to keep the House and possibly pick up seats in the Senate. Keep an eye on that approval number.
3. The other data point going in favor of Democrats doing better than one might expect in a midterm is that one of the reasons the opposing party picks up seats in a midterm from the incumbent president’s party is that normally president’s when they win election, their party gains seats in the House. And so much of the midterm losses are the opposing party’s clawback from the gains had during the presidential election year. This effect occurred with Reagan, Clinton and Obama, but was not in effect with Bush and Trump who had no gains in House elections in a presidential year because they lost the national popular vote. Biden, when first elected in 2020, had a situation where his party not only did not gain House seats even though he won popular vote by more than 7 million votes, Democrats actually lost seats in the November election. So the “clawback” scenario is not in effect.
4. There has been a plethora of discussion about Trump and the GOP and whether or not the anti-Trump conservative Republicans can retake the GOP in this or the next few elections, or whether there is a large group of conservative Republicans who oppose Trump who could have serious electoral impact. First, there was no significant movement of Republicans to Biden in this past election. In fact, while there was a huge increase in Republicans voting in 2020 (GOP voters did not sit out this election), Biden actually did worse among self-identified GOP voters than Hillary Clinton did in 2016. A super majority of GOP voters still like and approve of Trump and there has been no drop off of their support in aftermath of the insurrection on January 6th. Also, those same GOP voters believe the Big Lie and think there was wide spread voter fraud and that the election was stolen despite every piece of evidence showing otherwise.

I present this information and data not as completely predictive of what is ahead because as we have learned change and disruption is now a constant in politics, especially with a new census apportionment and redistricting in motion and there still is a year and a half until the midterms, but as a understanding of where we are today and in contrast to many myths pushed by some pundits and news platforms. Better to look forward with reality and facts as the basis of viewing the horizon, then going by the seat of our pants.