While there is still plenty of time for the Biden-Harris administration to turn this ship around, the current heading seems to be way off course with many voters. This includes a swath of voters who pulled the level for Joe Biden last year but have come to regret that decision given the recent disaster in Afghanistan and several domestic issues that continue to worsen.
The polling data, courtesy of Zogby, finds that voters of all demographics are now second-guessing themselves about their 2020 presidential vote:
According to the latest Zogby Poll one-fifth of likely voters regret voting for President Biden. On the surface it doesn’t seem like much, especially if you look at the three quarters of likely voters who did not regret their vote; 4% were not sure how they felt.
Why does this matter? If you take into consideration the size of the electorate, and how the last two Presidential elections (2016 and 2020) were decided by tens of thousands of votes in a handful of battleground states, this could really hurt President Biden’s chances in 2024.
Zogby isn’t the only polling outfit to find such data about the current administration. Rasmussen Reports, a right-leaning pollster, also found similar numbers concerning disappointment over the direction of the Biden presidency.
According to Rasmussen, if the election were held today, the outcome might be different:
Most voters would not vote to reelect President Joe Biden, and a significant number who voted for him in 2020 now regret their choice.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that, if the next presidential election were held today, 37% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for Biden. Forty-three percent (43%) would vote for former President Donald Trump, and 14% say they would vote for some other candidate.
Meanwhile, these types of polls correlate with Biden’s approval rating that continues to plummet.
For the sake of comparison, there was also a measurable, yet smaller group of voters during this same time period back in 2017 that regretted their vote for Donald Trump, according to Yahoo News (July 12, 2017):
In a Yahoo Finance online survey conducted in late June, 12.6% of Trump voters said they were dissatisfied with his performance as president, and 11.1% said they wouldn’t vote for him again. That’s a much larger portion than Trump’s margin of victory in key states that put him over the top last November, including Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin—which Trump won by less than 2% of the vote.
For what it’s worth, Biden’s share of voters regretting their vote is much higher than Trump’s which may indicate more dissatisfaction with the direction of the country today than compared to four years ago. Some voters were simply turned off by Trump’s demeanour or Twitter account, but they may have appreciated his policies. However, Biden’s share of “regret voters” is almost double the number of Trump “regret voters.”
In contrast, Joe Biden is more “likeable” and “empathetic,” yet his policies, so far, have seemed to cause more chaos in the country and abroad than Trump’s mean tweets.
The Biden administration, and Joe Biden’s presidency, was supposed to be the return of the “adults” in charge, yet it has turned into one mismanaged crisis after another. From the “mission accomplished” victory speech in July over covid-19, to the botched Aghanistaion withdrawal that continues to result in death and destruction, Biden has not offered voters much in the way of confidence.
Much of this perception could be changed in the coming months, as some of these headlines fade. Already the Biden administration is trying to pivot away from Afghanistan and back toward friendlier territory, such as arguing with the FDA and CDC over booster shots.
