Great news for Joe Biden
Despite Donald Trump’s claims of being everyone’s favorite president, he managed to spend four years in the Oval Office with his average approval rating never once peaking above 50%. While presidential approval ratings are rarely ever stable, his abysmal 42% approval was about the most stable thing in his administration. Even the COVID pandemic didn’t put him over the top, and his ratings bounced back after about a week, since he could barely even pretend to care about the crisis. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a president whose approval ratings weren’t underwater – so today was something of a big deal when President-elect Biden scored 55% favorability in the latest Gallup poll – the highest polling he’s had in two years, and roughly the same approval rating President Obama had in 2016.
This may not seem like a big deal – but it’s important for a few reasons. Biden’s numbers are growing with two critical groups: an increase in both independents and Republicans, which means that Trump’s fraud delusion is rapidly losing traction – in fact, enough that it’s affecting his own approval rating for the worse, and we might see it drop further than the low 40s before he leaves office.
The other good thing is that Biden’s approval rating – roughly what it was just before he entered the 2020 race for president, is likely boosted by his cabinet picks and will make it more difficult for Republicans to block any or force them from contention. This process, however, will be much easier if we volunteer and donate to the campaigns of Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff to help them win on January 5 so we can retake the Senate.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making