GOP Up 3 Points on the Generic Ballot as Biden Continues Sinking

Before readers scoff at a poll from Fox News, recall that this has been among the more friendly polling series in the business for Joe Biden. The Fox poll had him underwater by only single digits as late at the first of May, don’t forget, when he polled 45/53 on overall job approval.

It’s going downhill rapidly since, however, just as it has in other polling series such as Reuters and YouGov. The latest Fox News survey puts Biden at 40/59 and 16/41 on the “strongly” positions, and shows Biden in a much worse position for the midterms than Donald Trump faced:

The president’s job rating hit a low this week, with 40% of voters approving and 59% disapproving. That’s net negative by 19 points. His ratings were underwater by 14 points last month and by 8 points in early May. Biden’s best marks were in June 2021, when 56% approved and 43% disapproved.

Four years ago, at this same point in the election cycle, former President Donald Trump’s job rating was underwater by 5 points: 46% approved and 51% disapproved (July 2018).

Biden gets the thumbs-down from record numbers of women, Black voters, moderates, voters under age 30, Democrats, and independents.

And majorities overall disapprove of his issue performance: 73% disapprove on inflation, 68% on the economy, 61% on immigration, 59% on guns, 57% on energy policy, and 55% on handling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

We’ll get to issues and a couple of other questions in the poll shortly, but let’s take a look at the demos on overall job approval. They are almost uniformly bad; the gender gap has all but disappeared as Biden gets a 38/62 among men and a 42/57 among women. He’s well underwater among voters under the age of 35 (41/57) and over the age of 45 (41/58). He’s barely above water with urban voters (51/49) and crashing in the suburbs (42/58), and with suburban women (45/54).

So how does Biden get to 40%? He’s well below the 30% among independents ay 27/72,  which raises the question of how Biden got to 40% approval in the first place. Normally the independents hew closer to the overall result if the sample is properly balanced. This sample appears to be decently balanced; when leaners are added to the party totals, the D/R/I is 41/41/19, and that’s likely the issue. They have calculated Biden’s indie rating among only the true independents, which makes that result a whole lot worse.

Even where Biden does well, he doesn’t come close to doing well enough. Biden only gets a 78/22 among Democrats — not great in a polarized environment like ours, and only 35% strongly approve. Biden has a 64/36 job approval rating among black voters who usually support Democrats on a 90/10 basis, and only 20% strongly approve. He’s barely above water with Hispanics at 52/48, and only 22% strongly approve there too.

How bad has it gotten for Biden? Voters don’t want either of 2020’s candidates to run again, but a lot fewer want Biden than Donald Trump:

FOX NEWS POLL: 27% of voters want President Biden to run again in 2024. #FoxNewsSunday pic.twitter.com/Ecp8oiaKPI

— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) July 17, 2022

That doesn’t bode well for turnout in the midterm elections for Democrats. That’s reflected in the generic ballot results, which look consistent in more than one aspect:

FOX NEWS POLL: GOP Candidates still hold a 3 point lead over Democratic candidates. #FoxNewsSunday pic.twitter.com/qTfpcd9hdE

— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) July 17, 2022

The remarkable steadiness of the generic-ballot question in Fox’ series is reflected in the RCP and FiveThirtyEight aggregations as well. The midterm environment hasn’t changed significantly all year, which is to say it hasn’t changed since CPI inflation hit 7% and continued to climb. That issue remains the most potent for voters as inflation bites more and more households over that same period:

FOX NEWS POLL: Has inflation caused you financial hardship over the last six months? #FoxNewsSunday pic.twitter.com/IggpCp304l

— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) July 17, 2022

This also matches up with the open-ended results of the issues question asked by Fox. Rather than pick one issue, Fox runs through a number of them and asks respondents to rate their levels of concern with each. Inflation and higher crime rates top the list, both with historic levels of high concern:

Before anyone thinks that abortion has become a leading contender, Fox provides a history for each of these issues. Abortion only ticked up a single percentage point since the last poll at the beginning of May, which ended two days before the leak from the Supreme Court of the eventual decision on Dobbs. The “extremely” responses did tick up seven points, but at 43% it’s still twenty-four points behind inflation. This midterm is about the economy and crime, concern over which has grown much more acute over the last few months.

Finally, it looks like the results of Biden’s Saudi trip are already coming in before Fist-BumpGate. D’oh!

FOX NEWS POLL: 55% of voters disapprove of President Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship. #FoxNewsSunday pic.twitter.com/eBhpXIGWaN

— Fox News Sunday (@FoxNewsSunday) July 17, 2022

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases