I found the juxtaposition of two stories at memeorandum this morning amusing but nonetheless think my headline is right.
Gallup (“Biden’s 13th-Quarter Approval Average Lowest Historically“):
President Joe Biden averaged 38.7% job approval during his recently completed 13th quarter in office, which began on Jan. 20 and ended April 19. None of the other nine presidents elected to their first term since Dwight Eisenhower had a lower 13th-quarter average than Biden.
Here’s the graphic:
Indeed, it’s not even all that close. That he’s eight points behind where Donald Trump was at the same juncture (which coincided with the COVID lockdowns!) is stunning.
George H.W. Bush had the previous low 13th-quarter average approval rating, at 41.8% in 1992. Donald Trump and Barack Obama, Biden’s immediate predecessors in office, averaged 46.8% and 45.9% job approval, respectively, at the same point in their presidencies.
Jimmy Carter is the only other president with a sub-50% average in his 13th quarter. Three of the four prior presidents who had 13th-quarter approval averages below 50% lost their reelection bids, with Obama the exception.
Four of the six presidents who were reelected — Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — averaged between 51% and 55% approval during their 13th quarters. Another, Dwight Eisenhower, had the highest average for a president at this stage of his presidency, 73.2%.
From a broader historical perspective, Biden’s most recent quarterly average ranks 277th out of 314 presidential quarters in Gallup records dating to 1945. That puts it in the bottom 12% of all presidential quarters.
As I’ve noted many times over the years, I’m dubious of comparisons with pre-Clinton presidencies. The nature of the political and information environments in the era of the Permanent Campaign is simply different than it was in the Before Times. But, again, Biden is underperforming even Trump, who was underwater (that is, more Americans disapproving than approving) all but the first few days of his presidency.
And, while the economy is demonstrably getting better, it doesn’t seem to be helping Biden.
The latest quarterly average for Biden is technically the lowest of his presidency to date, though not meaningfully different from the previous quarter’s 39.0%. After Biden averaged better than 50% approval during his first two quarters in office, his subsequent readings have been near 40%.
The juxtaposition comes from this: The Guardian (“‘A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose’: can Allan Lichtman predict the 2024 election?“). It’s a very long interview and worth reading in full for the backstory and humorous anecdotes. But I’ll limit the excerpts here to the pieces defending the headline thesis.
He has been called the Nostradamus of US presidential elections. Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted the result of nine of the past 10 (and even the one that got away, in 2000, he insists was stolen from Al Gore). But now he is gearing up for perhaps his greatest challenge: Joe Biden v Donald Trump II.
This is followed by a longish backstory on how he came, along with Vladimir Keilis-Borok, to develop and publish his “13 Keys” way back in 1981.
They came up with 13 true/false questions and a decision rule: if six or more keys went against the White House party, it would lose. If fewer than six went against it, it would win. These are the 13 keys, as summarised by AU’s website:
1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
This is followed by a lot of interesting anecdotal discussion about various predictions Lichtman made.
“When I first developed my system and made my predictions, the professional forecasters blasted me because I had committed the ultimate sin of prediction, the sin of subjectivity.
“Some of my keys were not just cut and dried and I kept telling them, it’s not subjectivity, it’s judgment. We’re dealing with human systems and historians make judgments all the time, and they’re not random judgments. I define each key very carefully in my [1988] book and I have a record.”
This is followed by lots more anecdotes, including a stubborn insistence that he got 2000 right.
Perhaps Lichtman’s most striking prophecy, defying polls, commentators and groupthink, was that Trump – a former reality TV star with no prior political or military experience – would pull off a wildly improbable win over the former secretary of state and first lady Hillary Clinton in 2016. How did he know?
“The critical sixth key was the contest key: Bernie Sanders’s contest against Clinton. It was an open seat so you lost the incumbency key. The Democrats had done poorly in 2014 so you lost that key. There was no big domestic accomplishment following the Affordable Care Act in the previous term, and no big foreign policy splashy success following the killing of Bin Laden in the first term, so there were just enough keys. It was not an easy call.”
Now, Lichtman won’t formally make his prediction for this year’s election until August. But why is he so confident Biden will win the rematch?
As another election looms, he is not impressed by polls that show Trump leading Biden, prompting a fatalistic mood to take hold in Washington DC and foreign capitals.
“They’re mesmerised by the wrong things, which is the polls. First of all, polls six, seven months before an election have zero predictive value. They would have predicted President Michael Dukakis. They would have predicted President Jimmy Carter would have defeated Ronald Reagan, who won in a landslide; Carter was way ahead in some of the early polls.
“Not only are polls a snapshot but they are not predictors. They don’t predict anything and there’s no such thing as, ‘if the election were held today’. That’s a meaningless statement.”
He is likely to make his pronouncement on the 2024 presidential election in early August. He notes that Biden already has the incumbency key in his favour and, having crushed token challengers in the Democratic primary, has the contest key too. “That’s two keys off the top. That means six more keys would have to fall to predict his defeat. A lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose.”
So, increasingly, I think that’s right. While Biden seemingly has zero momentum, he’s got a ton of cash on hand and a strong party apparatus. Trump is flat broke, has intentionally gutted the RNC, and is mired in several criminal and civil trials that occupy his time and drain his treasury.
Still, here’s the current 270toWin Electoral Map:
There are 12 possible combinations of states for a Trump win and only 9 for a Biden win. Rather than try to go through all of those combinations seven months out—I agree with Lichtman that it’s just too early, since most voters just aren’t paying attention—let’s just go through the “Keys.”
1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the US House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections. Democrats had 235 seats in the 116th Congress, 222 in the 117th, and 213 in the 118th. TRUMP
2. Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination. BIDEN
3. Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president. BIDEN
4. Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign. UNKNOWN but leaning TRUMP. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is running and is currently showing a shockingly high 7-8 points in the polls that include him. I’m dubious that this lasts.
5. Short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign. BIDEN
6. Long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms. BIDEN
7. Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy. UNKNOWN but lean BIDEN. I simply don’t know how Lichtman scores “major changes.” In his Trump prediction for 2016, for example, he noted, “There was no big domestic accomplishment following the Affordable Care Act in the previous term, and no big foreign policy splashy success following the killing of Bin Laden in the first term.” Certainly, Biden has passed massive spending bills and, in my judgment, done a pretty good job managing the Russia-Ukraine conflict. But are either of those comparable to the ACA or killing Bin Laden?
8. Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term. UNKNOWN but lean TRUMP. Again, this is a matter of definitions. Right now, there’s nothing on the same level as the Black Lives Matter protests or even the COVID lockdown rebellion. There are a lot of demonstrations over the Israel-Gaza war. Is that enough? Will it sustain itself through the election?
9. Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal. While my high school and Army friends on Facebook are consumed by every minor allegation against the President, he’s been remarkably scandal-free in my judgment. BIDEN.
10. Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs. UNKNOWN but lean BIDEN. Obviously, the Afghanistan withdrawal was a short-term fiasco. But I’m skeptical voters will punish Biden for it almost four years later. And, while it could conceivably cost him Michigan’s 15 Electors, I don’t think we can consider the Gaza war a US policy failure.
11. Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs. Conversely, unless we’re going to count the already-planned Afghanistan withdrawal as a “major success,” we really haven’t seen anything that would shift the election. TRUMP
12. Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero. I’m rather confident that he is not. TRUMP
13. Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero. He’s decidedly not a national hero! But he’s arguably quite charismatic. TRUMP
So, with the aforementioned hedges, I’d say the Keys give Biden a 7-6 edge. That’s too close for comfort.
