01-03-2022, 11:24 PM
![[Image: Bidenapproval010222.png]](https://zogbyanalytics.com/images/za010222/Bidenapproval010222.png)
The latest Zogby Poll® indicates that President Biden has made gains in both his job approval and job performance ratings. Both metrics are important categories when measuring a president's execution of his or her agenda, but they have different meanings. Job approval is based on answers to the question "Overall, do you approve or disapprove of Joe Biden's job as President?" where the respondent can choose among 'strongly approve', 'somewhat approve', 'somewhat disapprove' and 'strongly disapprove'. In contrast, job performance is based on the question "Overall, how would you rate President Biden's job performance?" with the options of rating it as excellent, good, fair, or poor.
While clearly similar, these two questions should be viewed as distinct. Job approval is more likely to be driven by a politician's overall popularity. Thus, one's approval can be fairly high driven by hyper-partisanship or popularity among a few groups, but their job performance numbers will be lower in terms of how voters judge their performance in office. We've seen this in the past with the likes of other presidents such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump. At different times during their presidencies, each of the them enjoyed very high or decent approval numbers only to have their job performance or other metrics such as right direction/wrong direction be much lower.
We are seeing a similar patter with Joe Biden. Our new poll of 1,311 likely voters conducted December 21-22, 2021, shows Biden's approval rating creeping up to 50% (strongly approve-26% and somewhat approve-24% combined) while 48% of likely voters disapproved of him (strongly disapprove 36% and somewhat disapprove-13% combined), and 2% were not sure.
What's driving President Biden's recent surge? It's his base: voters under the age of 50 (59% approved/39% disapproved), college educated voters (58% approved/40% disapproved), urban voters (70% approved/29% disapproved), large city voters (76% approved/22% disapproved), Democrats (89% approved/11% disapproved), liberals (84% approved/15% disapproved), Catholics (55% approved/44% disapproved), African Americans (74% approved/23% disapproved), Hispanics (58% approved/41% disapproved) and voters whose annual household income is more than $100K (59% approved/39% disapproved).
The groups who most disapproved of President Biden were no big surprise, either: voters over the age of 50 (41% approved/58% disapproved), lower to middle income voters-annual household income $25K-75K (45% approved/54% disapproved), Whites (44% approved/55% disapproved), Protestants (42% approved/58% disapproved), Republicans (20% approved/79% disapproved), conservatives (25% approved/74% disapproved), suburban voters (41% approved/56% disapproved) and rural voters (33% approved/66% disapproved). Surprisingly, he did equally well with both men (50% approve/48% disapprove) and women (50% approved/49% disapproved).
The schism between those who approve and disapprove of Biden's job as president is also evident among the unique demographics we tested. These categories focused on voters' views concerning the pandemic: vaccinated voters (55% approved/43% disapproved) vs. nonvaccinated voters (34% approved/64% disapproved), voters who always wear a mask (66% approved/32% disapproved) vs. those who do not wear a mask (15% approved/84% disapproved) and voters who see Covid-19 as the most terrifying thing that has happened in their lifetime (75% approved/23% disapproved) vs. voters who see it as a flu or a common cold (16% approved/83% disapproved). Therefore, Biden's biggest support is among those who are vaccinated, wear a mask all/most of the time, and fear Covid-19, while his approval is anemic among those who are not vaccinated, do not wear a mask, and do not fear Covid-19.
Where Biden is taking it on the chin is with swing voters-the voters who propelled him to victory in the 2020 presidential election. He is not performing well with Independents (35% approved/60% disapproved), suburban voters (41% approved/56% disapproved), suburban women (45% approved/52% disapproved) and small city voters (39% approved/61% disapproved).
Zogby may not be your ideal pollster
but... a 4% gain in approval and a 4^ decline in disapproval are highly significant.
Take a look at the difference between vaccinated and non-vaccinated voters.
I thought HIV/AIDS was scary; COVID-19 is far scarier.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.