No Honeymoon: The Enthusiasm for Biden’s Presidency Appears to Match the Enthusiasm for His Campaign

One of the genuinely puzzling things about the 2020 election is the enthusiasm gap between candidate Biden and President Trump, which the corporate media often acknowledged as a cause for concern. Time magazine essentially explained the reversal of fortunes on that metric and numerous others during election month as precincts endlessly counted ballots. Legal maneuvering and massive donations to local elections offices brought scores of people who are typically non-voters into the process in Democrat strongholds.

As a result, it is going about as you would expect. Americans’ response to Biden’s policies and the president himself is lukewarm at best. Two separate polls, Rasmussen and Harvard/Harris, show that more Americans believe the country is on the wrong track than the right track. Rasmussen reports that 56% of likely voters feel the nation is headed down the wrong path, and Harvard Harris says a plurality of 47% feel the same, with 43% responding that we are headed in the right direction.

According to Rasmussen, for his first month in office, Biden has a Presidential Approval Index rating of -5. This finding is consistent with the firm’s Daily Presidential Tracking Poll, which has never entered positive territory for Biden. On two days in mid-February, those who strongly approved of his performance and strongly disapproved netted out to zero, and that is the highest it has been. There was a low of -10 on February 26.

Economic confidence has also declined for the third month in a row following the election. Before Election Day, it was 126.4 in Rasmussen’s index and heading back toward the high of 147.8 directly before the pandemic lockdowns. The index now sits at 97.8, a nearly 30-point slide. Harvard Harris also shows a plurality of registered voters, 45%, who believe the economy is on the wrong track and a majority, 53%, characterize the economy as weak. Rasmussen finds a plurality of Americans expect their financial situation to worsen, and only 18% believe the economy will get better. Only 13% of unaffiliated voters, an important constituency for 2022, feel optimistic that the economy will improve.

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