A longtime political expert, Byron York, is warning Democrats that presidential approval ratings historically drop heading into the midterms, which are just 10 months away now.
And that would be for Joe Biden, whose approval ratings already are routinely assessed in the low 40s in various polls, and have dropped as low as the low 30s on occasion.
That, in practicality, would mean virtually no chance for the party of the left to retain control of either the House or the Senate.
York, now the chief political correspondent for the Washington Examiner and a Fox News contributor, has covered the Bush, Obama, Trump and now Biden administrations.
He formerly was the White House correspondent for National Review and he’s been published in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, and the New Republic.
At the Examiner, he’s released an opinion piece that paints a dark future for Democrats – mostly because of Biden’s plunging popularity.
“For every candidate, Democrat or Republican, running for the House or Senate this year, Biden’s numbers mean political life or death. That is because the president’s job approval rating is an extraordinarily important factor in the midterm elections,” he explained.
He pointed out Pew’s assessment of Biden’s popularity at 41%. But that means 56% disapprove.
“If those results continue, they will be felt in November,” he said.
He cited Sean Trende, of Real Clear Politics, who noted, “In our increasingly polarized and nationalized politics, the single most determinative factor in midterm outcomes is the president’s job approval.With both the House and Senate very narrowly split between the two parties, entering the 2022 elections with a president whose job approval is at this level carries catastrophic implications for the Democrats.”
York pointed out that Gallup has looked at midterm elections dating back to 1946, and found “in elections where the president’s job approval rating was above 50%, Gallup said in a 2018 article, his party’s midterm losses in the House averaged 14 seats. But in elections where the president’s job approval rating was below 50%, the losses averaged 37 seats.”
Bill Clinton in 1994 lost his party 53 seats, Barack Obama in 2010 63 seats, and President Donald Trump in 2018 41 seats – all when their approval ratings were in the 40s.
A change of six seats in the U.S. House now would put the GOP in the majority. One seat changed in the Senate would give the GOP the majority.
“Trende notes that Republicans winning control of the Senate would be possible if Biden’s job approval rating were around 51%. If Biden’s rating were 48%, a GOP victory would become likely. And now? ‘At 42%, the model envisions virtually no chance for Democrats to hold the Senate and predicts a loss of four seats as the most likely outcome,’ Trende writes.”
He pointed there’s always the possibility of the “unexpected,” like the COVID pandemic in 2020.
But he notes the verdict from elections analyst Nathan Gonzales: “Looking back more than 70 years, there hasn’t been a single president who substantially improved his job approval rating from late January/early February of a midterm election year to late October/early November. In the last 18 midterm elections going back to Harry Truman in 1950, the average president’s job approval rating dropped eight points between this time of year and election day.”
York noted, “Nothing is set in stone. But things are looking bad for Biden and his party.”
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