Here’s a new poll on Biden’s approval numbers
Of course, you may think polls are garbage. But I find this recent one of interest. It indicates that young voters are deserting Biden:
The new poll found that Biden’s approval rating among millennials and Generation Z respondents had dropped nearly 20 points since the beginning of his presidency.
Thirty-nine percent of Generation Z respondents said they approve of the job Biden has done as president, a 21-point decline from 60 percent of respondents who approved of Biden’s handling of the job when he first took office.
Forty-one percent of millennial respondents said they approve of Biden’s job as president, a 19-point decline from 60 percent of respondents who approved of his job as president through the months of January and June 2021, his first months in the White House.
That sounds encouraging. However, here’s a caveat:
Along party lines, 30 percent of Generation Z respondents who identify as Democrats said they approve of Biden’s job as president, while 52 percent of independents and 18 percent of Republicans surveyed agreed, according to the poll.
Twenty-seven percent of millennial respondents who identify as Democrats approve of the job Biden has done as president, while 53 percent of independents and 20 percent of Republicans surveyed also approve of Biden’s job as president.
The large disparity between Democrats’ and Independents’ approval rating is counter-intuitive, and to me it represents the likelihood that the young Democrats disapprove of Biden only because he is ineffective at achieving some of the leftist aims for which they were hoping.
If you look at the chart here, you’ll find another interesting thing: the drop in approval for Biden varies inversely with the initial level of approval. In other words, initially the youngest groups had the highest approval ratings for Biden, and they not only have had the steepest drops, but their approval ratings have now dropped to lower levels than the present levels among the older groups.
The older groups had lower ratings for Biden to begin with, but among Boomers the levels have only gone down seven points (to a current level of 46, significantly higher than among the young). Among the generation before the Boomers (a group the poll calls “Traditionalists”, a designation I’ve never heard before) the ratings haven’t moved at all – they were 48% approval and they remain at 48%, the highest level of all the groups even though that group had the lowest level to begin with. Apparently it’s at least partly because there are fewer Independents in that group. But that doesn’t entirely explain the phenomenon.
In addition, Biden’s approval rating has fallen approximately 20% among blacks and Hispanics – although the levels remain higher than other groups with black approval at 67% and Hispanic at 52%.
It always puzzles me when people who call themselves Conservatives approve of policies or people that no conservative could like, and this poll is no exception with 15% of supposed conservatives approving of Biden’s performance. Either they are lying, joking, misunderstanding the meaning of the term “conservative,” not paying attention, or happy with Biden because he is hurting the fortunes of the left.
I am a member of the age group called “Traditionalists.” It is a mystery to me that older adults, who have lived through the Nixon/Carter inflation, would approve of Biden. We remember what 21% mortgage interest rates were like. The national debt was much lower then. I had Treasury bonds in my retirement plan that paid 16% interest. Does anyone doubt that such an interest rate on today’s national debt would end our economy ?
There’s also the ugly possibility that they are conservatives in some sense I probably can’t grasp, but suffering so acutely from TDS that they genuinely think Biden is an improvement–and therefore entitled to a qualified “approval.”
Among the generation before the Boomers (a group the poll calls “Traditionalists”, a designation I’ve never heard before)
We used to be referred to as Generation X. Now we’re either lumped in with the Boomers, outright ignored, or evidently called something else. “Traditionalists” is a new one to me as well. Makes me wonder what the heck it’s supposed to mean.
As to younger people losing faith in Biden, I agree that just because they’ve soured on Biden doesn’t mean they’re becoming Conservatives. It still helps in November since they just won’t turn out to vote, but we’re not exactly winning hearts and minds of the youth yet.
What interests me is that on many levels these polls represent the official narrative of the Left, so if we’re seeing this kind of rot in Biden it makes me sniff something. Both the genuine collapse of Biden’s position and probably something more like political mechanisms. It’s not much of a secret that almost nobody actually SUPPORTS Slow Joe outside of those who can puppeteer him and who directly benefit from him like his wife “Dr.” Jill Biden.
Re: Mike K, I think part of what this shows is primarily narrative spin by the left/polling to themselves, but another part of it is the fact that the “Traditionalists” have at least some reason to fear that whoever replaces Biden will be significantly less “Traditionalist” and more radical/extremist than even he and his current puppet masters are. Which I think is a reasonable bet.
Wendy Laubach:
Good point.
Mike K – Its been 40 years since 1982. The vast majority of even late middle age Americans today have no adult memories of the last inflationary period or the 15%+ rates and recession that it took to end it.
Generally – the thing that strikes me most about Biden is that this is the first time in decades that luck hasn’t bailed out Democrats. H.W. Bush wasn’t responsible for the 1991-92 recession, but it (and Ross Perot) elected Clinton. Clinton wasn’t responsible for the 1990’s boom or the budget surpluses, but he got the credit. 9/11 and the resulting wars took place on W. Bush’s watch even though he wasn’t responsible. W. really wasn’t responsible for the 2008 financial crisis either, but took the blame. Obama’s economic policies were awful, but the financial crisis masked that. Trump wasn’t responsible for COVID, but took the blame anyway.
I think Democrats lived a charmed existence for so long that many of them began to believe their own BS. The chickens have come home to roost for Biden, though. Democrats really haven’t had a disasterous presidency like this since Carter, and I think that Biden will surpass Carter in awfulness. There’s been a lot of commentary recently about how Democrats are poised to be locked out of power despite winning a majority of the so-called popular vote. At the rate things are going under Biden, they might not have to worry about winning the popular vote again for some time. (Let us hope.)
Bauxite:
Biden has already surpassed Carter in awfulness.
The reason Biden and his handlers can ignore his poor poling among Gen Z voters is that that group does not consistently participate in voting.
I am 75 and remember the last inflation. We were trying to buy a house, interest rates were something else. I really don’t remember what we paid. We weren’t making much money, Me just out of Navy and Grad School, Wife just starting to teach. Very low incomes.
Of course a little later was the OPEC gas crunch, which we have to look forward too now.
The vast majority of even late middle age Americans today have no adult memories of the last inflationary period or the 15%+ rates and recession that it took to end it.
They do remember it.
Paul Volcker placed controls on the growth of monetary aggregates and let interest rates fluctuate. The increase in consumer prices was 12.5% during calendar year 1980, 8.9% during 1981, and 3.8% during 1982 (measuring December to December). Between the 1st Quarter of 1981 and the 3d Quarter of 1982, the rate at which goods in services were being produced declined by 2.1%. There was a disagreeable sectoral shift going on at the time and extraordinary spikes of unemployment in select commuter belts (Detroit and Flint foremost among them); the media hyped these to make economic conditions sound worse than they were.
Jerome Powell and his confederates on the Federal Reserve Board own this situation, so it would be optimal if the lot of them were replaced and a new crew then got busy.
W. really wasn’t responsible for the 2008 financial crisis either, but took the blame.
There were salient actors in Washington who did bear different shares of the blame. “W” ‘wasn’t responsible’ because the president seldom has granular knowledge of policy-making in any area not his primary focus. The Democratic Party insider nexus running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which included Barney Frank’s butt-buddy Herb Moses), the quartet of Clinton Administration officials who frustrated Brooksley Born’s efforts in 1998 to bring the OTC derivatives market out in the open, the clueless crew at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac agents in Congress were up to their necks in it. Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers, Arthur Leavitt Jr., Alan Greenspan, Christopher Cox, Barney Frank, Christopher Dodd, Paul O’Neill, and John Snow were among those at fault. I think Leavitt was the only one contrite about bad policy decisions.
Note, George W Bush was a promoter of owner-occupied housing. This was a vector influencing Freddie Mac’s decision to slash underwriting standards in 2003. ‘Compassionate conservatism’ was shite.
Back in the day, there was massive bloc voting by blacks, but that aside political choices were much less influenced by questions of identity and were more sensitive to external circumstances. Also, people generally voted in person in 1978 and 1980 and you had to apply for an absentee ballot and state a reason from a checklist for so doing. The Democratic Party of Crime has figured out a way to decouple election returns from performance in office.
Of course a little later was the OPEC gas crunch, which we have to look forward too now.
The supply shocks occurred between January 1979 and August 1980. I don’t think we’re facing anything so wretched today, because the export market for petroleum is not so concentrated.
Among the generation before the Boomers (a group the poll calls “Traditionalists”, a designation I’ve never heard before) the ratings haven’t moved at all – they were 48% approval and they remain at 48%, the highest level of all the groups even though that group had the lowest level to begin with. Apparently it’s at least partly because there are fewer Independents in that group. But that doesn’t entirely explain the phenomenon.
I’ll wager they’ve been extrapolating from tiny samples.
It always puzzles me when people who call themselves Conservatives approve of policies or people that no conservative could like, and this poll is no exception with 15% of supposed conservatives approving of Biden’s performance. Either they are lying, joking, misunderstanding the meaning of the term “conservative,” not paying attention, or happy with Biden because he is hurting the fortunes of the left.
Wm. F. Buckley sat for an interview with The Progressive ca. 1982 and was asked if he continued to favor disfranchisement of 30% of the adult population. He said he did. He was asked which 30%. His reply: “The 30% who have never heard of the United Nations”. You’re commonly asking questions of people who are more disengaged than you could imagine.
We have employer-paid health insurance because of the wage and price controls on the 70s. Since employers couldn’t give raises to keep workers, they started luring people by promising to provide paid health insurance and other such benefits. I remember precisely how bad the 70s inflation was.
We have employer-paid health insurance because of the wage and price controls on the 70s.
No, health plans grew common during the 2d World War. Nixon’s wage and price controls were destructive, but they only lasted a couple of years outside the petroleum sector.
This internet thingy can help you look things up. I think some Xrs are confused.
“Traditionalists are typically born between 1927 and 1945 and grew up during the Great Depression, which was from 1933 to 1938.”
https://labmedicineblog.com/2018/05/30/history-of-generation-traditionalists/
Really quite funny that someone would confuse Xrs with being traditional.
The story I heard was that employer paid health plans came in at the end of WWII because corporations were afraid that returning soldiers would take some time off (+ other motivations) and not re-enter the workforce. Not terrible logic, but ultimately not a good thing for building a sensible and flexible healthcare system.
Note, George W Bush was a promoter of owner-occupied housing. This was a vector influencing Freddie Mac’s decision to slash underwriting standards in 2003. ‘Compassionate conservatism’ was shite.
This. And I believe at some level he endorsed or backed Madoff as well. Maybe much earlier in his NASDAQ years. Forget the specifics.
So the story I heard….gee, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a profession we could trust to sort these things out such that every school could teach something approaching an understanding of …never mind…was that unions pushed the healthcare thing in their contracts for…hmmm…whatever reason and thus the white collar people were stupid enough to fall for it too. Probably because it was, and still is, tax “free” for big corporations but us regular guys have to pay for health “care”/insurance with our post-tax dollars.
This. And I believe at some level he endorsed or backed Madoff as well. Maybe much earlier in his NASDAQ years. Forget the specifics.
Huh? One of the guilty parties on Madoff’s staff said she’d been hired in 1968, trained by Madoff in his deceptive practices, and followed those procedures for 40 years. Of all the people Madoff employed, only about 12 worked on and knew about the scam.
So the story I heard….gee, wouldn’t it be cool if there was a profession we could trust to sort these things out such that every school could teach something approaching an understanding of …never mind…was that unions pushed the healthcare thing in their contracts for…hmmm…whatever reason and thus the white collar people were stupid enough to fall for it too. Probably because it was, and still is, tax “free” for big corporations but us regular guys have to pay for health “care”/insurance with our post-tax dollars.
The utility of employer-paid plans is that they induce the assembly of fairly stable actuarial pools.
The name for pre-boomers I usually hear is “The Silent Generation.”
“The Democratic Party of Crime has figured out a way to decouple election returns from performance in office.”
Aided at least partly by a Chamber of Commerce GOP employing failure theater and refusing to even contest certain parts of the country. Bill Clinton started the Democrats down the road of becoming more white-collar and pro-corporate nearly 30 years ago but it took Trump of all people to finally force the Republican Party to recognize and respond to it.
Mike
Huh? One of the guilty parties on Madoff’s staff said she’d been hired in 1968, trained by Madoff in his deceptive practices, and followed those procedures for 40 years.
Yeah. Nice work. Where did I say or even imply that W had anything to do with the plan? There was some political tie with Madoff himself. Or on the regulation of what Madoff was up to. Bush’s SEC guy couldn’t find his ass in the dark with both hands. Don’t play silly games with me.
The utility of employer-paid plans is that they induce the assembly of fairly stable actuarial pools.
I…I just…never mind.
One thing the age breakdown of Biden’s approval ratings reveals is that the younger the group, the more entrenched the indocrination.
Result: they shall lose the liberties they were bequeathed by far better men and women than they. Because in regarding those liberties of little value, they demonstrate themselves to be unworthy of liberty.
I’d wish for them that the chains of their future enslavement rest lightly upon their shoulders but for the grievous harm they are enabling to both future innocents and to those who do value liberty.
Never have so many had so much for which they were so ungrateful.
Bush’s SEC guy couldn’t find his ass in the dark with both hands. Don’t play silly games with me.
Harry Markopolous presented his case to a youngish lawyer in the SEC’s enforcement division. She didn’t have a clue what he was talking about; people enroll in law school because they’re verbally agile but bad at math. She did nothing and never referred his presentation to anyone in the agency who might have had some critical engagement with it. He never spoke to Christopher Cox.
I…I just…never mind.
If you have a complaint, let’s hear it.
One thing the age breakdown of Biden’s approval ratings reveals is that the younger the group, the more entrenched the indocrination.
How does it reveal that?
Art Deco –
A person who entered the workforce in 1982 at age 18 is 58 years old today. A person who entered the workforce in 1982 at age 22 is 62 today. I’m not suggesting that people who lived through the 1970’s inflation or the sky-high interest rates in the early 1980’s has forgotten, just that most adults now aren’t old enough to remember what that was like as an adult. I suspect that most adults today just took it for granted that low interest rates and low inflation would go on forever. They’re in for a nasty shock.
– Re W. – I was thinking of his “ownership society” and lowered standards which is why I hedged a bit (i.e, “wasn’t really responsible”). I also remember that Democrats claimed that W. was heartless for not lowering the lending standards even more, so I give him a bit of credit for still being better than the alternative. Regardless, as you pointed out, there were plenty of other factors that were more responsible for the 2008 crisis than W.
GB “One thing the age breakdown of Biden’s approval ratings reveals is that the younger the group, the more entrenched the indocrination.”
“How does it reveal that?”
“Twenty-seven percent of millennial respondents who identify as Democrats approve of the job Biden has done as president,”
“30 percent of Generation Z respondents who identify as Democrats said they approve of Biden’s job as president,”
“Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z.” Wikipedia
This brief summary suggests that the employer based health plans began during WWII, as Art Deco stated.
To combat inflation, the 1942 Stabilization Act was passed. Designed to limit employers’ freedom to raise wages and thus to compete on the basis of pay for scarce workers, the actual result of the act was that employers began to offer health benefits as incentives instead.
Suddenly, employers were in the health insurance business. Because health benefits could be considered part of compensation but did not count as income, workers did not have to pay income tax or payroll taxes on those benefits.
to me it represents the likelihood that the young Democrats disapprove of Biden only because he is ineffective at achieving some of the leftist aims for which they were hoping.
–neo
No doubt.
However, I’ve got to wonder whether some young people, especially young males, aren’t also picking up on Biden as an out-of-touch, out-of-it, weak old man, eminently worthy of contempt.
That’s biology. As alpha-alpha-male of the entire country, Biden is all-wrong.
There’s still plenty of room at the bottom of Biden’s polls.
Because I agreed with you, acknowledged your point, yet you found a nit to pick about what I followed with. I’m not going to argue with such an argumentative nit picker as to which of the numerous and nebulous reasons is the ONE main reason we, well most of us anyway, got suckered into The One True Healthcare System That Solves Everything. It’s a fool’s errand.
Breaking –
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-administration-looks-to-reimplement-mask-mandates-in-bid-to-get-approval-rating-even-lower
He shakes the hands of phantoms.
I called him john gill after the star trek character focusing on biden ignores mayorkas garland and austin the architects of our ruin
“…ignores mayorkas garland and austin…’
And that paragon, Randi Weingarten, the de facto Secretary of “Education”:
“Randi Weingarten Claims Parental-Choice Legislation Is the ‘Way in Which Wars Start’”—
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/randi-weingarten-claims-parental-choice-legislation-is-the-way-in-which-wars-start/
Classic Communist Party (and NAZI) tactics: Declare war on PARENTS and then when PARENTS—discovering that they are targeted for trying to protect their kids—decide that they must fight back, accuse those PARENTS of instigating a potential war.
The “Honorable” Ms. Weingarten. (To go together with the “Honorable” Merrick Garland and the “Honorable” Alejandro Mayorkas, etc., etc., etc….)
And that paragon, Randi Weingarten, the de facto Secretary of “Education”:
“Randi Weingarten Claims Parental-Choice Legislation Is the ‘Way in Which Wars Start’”—
Well, if that’s the deal Randi, I’m aiming for your head.