OPINION:
Understanding the Democratic elite’s panic requires not looking at President Biden’s numbers but into them. Despite seemingly small margins of separation, Mr. Biden is on course for a November defeat of historic proportions. This precedented trajectory is spurring the Democrats’ unprecedented step of working to force out their duly elected nominee.
On Jan. 25, Gallup reported that after a third full year in office, Mr. Biden’s 39.8% approval rating was the lowest since former President Jimmy Carter. Three months later, on April 26, Gallup reported that Mr. Biden’s 13th-quarter approval rating (38.7%) was the lowest since at least former President Harry Truman.
As of Wednesday, Real Clear Politics’ average national polling had Mr. Biden’s job approval at 40.1%. Mr. Biden hasn’t averaged above 42% since last Sept. 11, and he hasn’t had a net positive approval rating since August 2021.
Mr. Biden’s 2024 job performance rating on pertinent issues is even lower than his overall one. According to RCP’s July 17 national averaging, he rates lower on the economy (39.1%), foreign policy (34.3%), immigration (31.5%), inflation (34.8%), crime (38.3%) and the Israel-Hamas war (30.8%).
So, what do such low performance ratings mean? Plenty. They are extremely close to where Mr. Biden is performing in election matchup polls.
In a five-way race, which is what November will be, Mr. Biden was at 38.9%, according to RCP’s average, down double digits from his 51.3% of the popular vote in 2020.
Such numbers are also perilously close to the Democrats’ electoral floor — their party’s percentage of the American electorate.
According to 2020 exit polling, Democrats made up 37% of the electorate then. Mr. Biden is polling less than 2 percentage points above this threshold now — and his job performance is substantially below it on several important issues.
Considering Mr. Biden is the incumbent and reelection campaigns are historically referendums on incumbents’ performances if he hasn’t sold voters yet — and he scores even worse on issues most pertinent to them — he likely won’t win. In other words, Mr. Biden is near the Democrats’ electoral floor and has a low ceiling.
So, what could such dismal ratings translate to? A historical drubbing in November. To see how bad, Democrats can look back half a century.
The last Democrat to win the popular vote percentage as low as Mr. Biden now polls was George McGovern in 1972. President Richard Nixon swamped McGovern 60.7% to 37.5%, winning by almost 18 million votes. The Electoral College vote was a 520-17 landslide; McGovern won only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. By comparison, amid the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover won more electoral votes in 1932 (59) than McGovern did 40 years later.
Superimpose Mr. Biden’s levels on 2020’s totals and see the Democrats’ reason for panic.
In 2020, 158,429,631 popular votes were cast in the general election. Mr. Biden won 81,283,501 of them. If Mr. Biden won just 38.9% of the popular vote in 2024, he would win just 61.6 million popular votes — almost 20 million votes less than he won four years ago.
If Donald Trump maintained his current trajectory, he would win 68.1 million votes. While admittedly below his 2020 total (by roughly 6 million votes), it would still result in him beating Mr. Biden by 6.5 million popular votes — almost the same margin Mr. Trump lost by in 2020.
With numbers so low, Democratic leaders aren’t just worrying about their ticket’s top. Many voters in presidential elections don’t cast ballots for every race. In 2020, over 4 million fewer votes were cast in House races than in the presidential race. If such a drop-off occurred under the better circumstances of four years ago, what could such a decline mean for Democrats’ effort to recapture the House this year? Or their efforts to hold the Senate, where they are defending 23 seats (with up to nine in question) to Republicans’ 11.
Although Mr. Trump is constitutionally prohibited from seeking reelection, not so those elected to Congress. A November Republican landslide could produce a slew of incumbents who are historically hard to dislodge — winning reelection at a 98% rate in 2022.
Mr. Biden’s consistent trajectory and historical precedent have produced panic among the Democratic elite.
That panic has led them to the unprecedented step of seeking to remove their own duly elected incumbent nominee less than four months before the election. It is nothing less than an internal coup. Although Democrats claim democracy is at stake in November, it already is within their own party. And it is because they fear the outcome of the November election.
• J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987 to 2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001 to 2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004 to 2023.
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