Tag Archives: Jimmy Carter

Comparing Biden

President Joe Biden / Photo by Gage Skidmore

By Jim Ellis — Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023

President

Polling: Biden at Lowest Job Approval Rating — News reports are quoting the recent CBS News poll from the YouGov international polling firm (July 26-28; 2,181 US adults; online) as giving President Joe Biden his lowest job approval rating to date. The CBS result found a whopping 60 percent saying they disapproved of the president’s performance in office.

Lately, presidential job approval polling is prevalent. Several firms, such as Morning Consult and Rasmussen Reports, track presidential job performance daily. Therefore, we frequently see a rather wide range of Biden performance ratings on a regular basis.

According to the FiveThirtyEight data organization, President Biden’s positive job approval response from July 26 through Aug. 1 ranged from 35 percent (Premise) all the way to 47 percent (Rasmussen Reports). The president’s disapproval score was recorded from a low of 51 percent (Rasmussen) to a high of 60 percent (YouGov for CBS; Premise).

Regardless of how the job approval research data may vary from day to day, it is curious to see just how these numbers compare with the historical presidential research. The Gallup data firm began presidential approval polling and has charted it ever since President Harry Truman began preparing for the 1948 national election.

According to the current Gallup data, last recorded on President Biden’s 918th day in office, 40 percent of the sampling universe graded him with a positive job approval score (Gallup only records the positive approval response on their historical chart).

Reviewing the 14 presidents from Truman through Biden, inclusive, we look at where certain other presidents stood at around this same time in their own administrations. Interestingly, three other presidents were within the same approval rating realm as Biden at this same approximate point in their presidencies. The three are: Donald Trump (42 percent at the 922nd day of his presidency); Barack Obama (42 percent; 929); and Ronald Reagan (44 percent; 923).

As you can see just from this group, presidential approval 18 or so months before the general election is not an absolute predictor as to whether the subject wins or loses the succeeding national election. Just from the above sample of three, we see one who lost (Trump) and two who won (Obama, Reagan). President Reagan, in fact, had the highest growth rate from his standing 923 days into his term to his final vote percentage of all 14 charted presidents (44 percent approval; 58.8 percent vote percentage in the 1984 election; a comparative gain of 14.8 percentage points).

This tells us that presidential job performance between the commensurate benchmark point in time and the election, and running a sound campaign, are far more important factors in determining presidential re-election outcome than job approval at this point in the term.

Interestingly, the three presidents with the highest approval rating at the commensurate benchmark who ran for re-election: George H.W. Bush (72 percent approval; 905th day in office); Dwight Eisenhower (72 percent; 910); and George W. Bush (62 percent approval; 900) were also the three who lost the most percentage points from their approval ratings in comparison to their ending vote percentage.

In fact, as we know, the leader at this commensurate point, George H.W. Bush with a 72 percent positive job approval, would go on to lose re-election with a finishing popular vote percentage 34.5 points lower than his approval score 18 months before the 1992 national vote. Both presidents Eisenhower and George W. Bush followed the same pattern, but not as dramatically. Eisenhower dropped 14.6 percent from his approval rating to final vote percentage, and Bush, 11.3 percent.

Overall, of the 14 presidents with recorded job approval scores throughout their tenure in office, seven won the succeeding election and four lost. Two — presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson — did not seek another term. Obviously, Kennedy had been assassinated, while Johnson declined to run.

Of the seven who won the succeeding election, four had positive job approval ratings approximately 18 months before the vote (Truman, Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush), while three did not (Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Obama).

From the group of four presidents who lost the succeeding election, two had positive ratings approximately 900 days into their terms (George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford), and two were in upside-down territory (Jimmy Carter and Trump).

Though President Biden has low approval ratings at this juncture, it is by no means certain that he will fail to win re-election in 2024. History tells us that any result can still happen.

Hispanics: A New Political Wild Card

By Jim Ellis — Thursday, June 29, 2023

Electorate

Mayra Flores

Hispanics: Swing Demographic — A new nationwide poll suggests the Hispanic community is now becoming much more of a swing demographic than its previous status as a homogenic Democratic voting bloc. While the Democrats still maintain majority support within Latino communities throughout the country, their margins are beginning to wane.

The Ipsos polling firm partnering with the Axios news service and Noticias Telemundo conducted an online nationwide poll of 1,116 Latino adults and registered voters over the June 2-9 period. Possibly the most surprising response is that a respondent plurality of 32 percent believes that neither party cares about them. A total of 30 percent say the Democrats care more about them, 11 percent believe Republicans do, another 11 percent say both do, and 15 percent did not respond for various reasons.

The Ipsos/Telemundo polling analysis further says that the Hispanic numbers are down considerably for Democrats when compared to historical trends. The study compares the 60 percent of the vote Latinos delivered for Democrats in 2022 to Presidents John F. Kennedy receiving 90 percent of the Latino vote in 1960, and Jimmy Carter attracting 82 percent Hispanic support in 1976. In 2022, Republicans garnered 39 percent of the Hispanic vote, which is a significant increase. Any time the Republicans reach 36 percent in this demographic category they are exceeding their national vote goal.

The analysis also points out that non-partisan Hispanic voters are outpacing those who choose a political party affiliation in Arizona, Florida, and Nevada. They are not alone, however, as the population at-large appears to be moving more toward Independent or non-affiliated political party status in most places but particularly the aforementioned.

The analysis also illustrates the fact that Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic group in the country, making them even more valuable as a voting center. The analysts quote US Census figures indicating that the entire US Latino population now exceeds 62 million, which is a whopping 23 percent growth factor in the decade ending in April of 2020.

The analysis also says that while Hispanics are gravitating more toward Republicans in Florida, they are still strongly Democratic in California and holding their own for Democrats in Texas. The analysts suggest, however, that Republicans under-performed among Hispanics in Texas, saying Democrats were able to hold “statewide and district” victories in critical places because of Hispanic loyalty.

The Texas analysis is flawed, however. There were 12 statewide races in the Lone Star on the 2022 ballot, including contests for state Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals. Republicans won all 12 with a very consistent voting pattern. GOP victories in the statewide contests ranged from just beyond 53 percent to just over 57 percent, while the Democrats consistently fell between 41 and 44 percent. These are typical Texas electoral results.

The one race they claim flipped to the Democrats in Hispanic South Texas was GOP Rep. Mayra Flores’ loss. The analysts did not complete their research. The contest Flores won in a 2022 special election was in a different district than her regular 2022 election campaign because of redistricting.

In the original 34th District, the FiveThirtyEight data organization found a partisan swing of D+5. In the new 34th, where she was paired with Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen, the Democrats gained 12 points on the same partisan lean scale to arrive at a D+17 figure. The final vote tally in favor of Rep. Gonzalez was 53-44 percent, which is in line with the traditional partisan voting pattern for such a district.

The Hispanic Republican swing in South Texas, however, is quite real. Of the five congressional districts that touch the Mexican border, Republicans now control two, and the third Democratic seat, the 28th District, is Rep. Henry Cuellar’s (D-Laredo) domain. He is generally regarded as the most conservative Democrat remaining in the House.

The overall premise of the Ipsos/Telemundo poll is that a much larger portion of the Hispanic vote is now more open to both parties. This development is an opportunity for Republicans, but it remains to be seen if the party can craft a series of messages that will convince a larger number of Hispanics to vote their way.

Together with the Asian population, Hispanics represent a Republican opportunity group that the party needs to offset its poor standing among suburban women and college educated voters, a latter trend that only seems to widen. If the GOP is successful in attracting more Latinos and Asians, 2024 could prove to be a watershed political realignment year.

The Presidential Debates Loom

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 1, 2020 — The Presidential Debate series looms on the political horizon, and controversy is beginning to swirl even though the first forum is still a month away.

The first in a series of currently three presidential debates is set for Sept. 29.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week that Democratic nominee Joe Biden shouldn’t debate President Trump. “I wouldn’t legitimize a conversation with him, nor a debate in terms of the presidency of the United States,” she was quoted as saying at a news conference.

At the end of July, former Bill Clinton news secretary Joe Lockhart wrote for CNN.com that Biden shouldn’t debate the president. “Whatever you do, don’t debate Trump. Trump has now made more than 20,000 misleading or false statements according to the Washington Post,” Lockhart penned as public advice to Biden.

Some on the Republican side argue that these Democratic leaders are beginning to lay the groundwork for Biden to avoid the debates because of concerns their candidate would fare poorly opposite President Trump.

For his part, Biden says he will debate the president, and become his own “fact checker on the floor.” He will also begin holding campaign events after Labor Day. In an Aug. 28 interview with the Associated Press, Biden said he’ll “meet people where it matters – not at irresponsible rallies or staged for TV to boost egos, but real people’s communities, in real local businesses, in their lives.” Biden further said he’ll “hold events consistent with the state rules about crowd sizes and other regulations.”

The first debate is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 29, the second on Thursday, Oct. 15, and the final forum culminates a week later on Oct. 22. The vice presidential debate between incumbent Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 7.

The debates have proven important in the past and always draw large audiences. According to the Pew Research Center, even the first televised debate, between then-Sen. John F. Kennedy and then-Vice President Richard Nixon, drew over 66 million viewers usually on black and white televisions, at a time when the US population was just under 181 million people, or approximately 55 percent of today’s total populace.

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The September Reset

By Jim Ellis

Sept. 6, 2016 — Labor Day is always viewed as the traditional general election initiation benchmark for presidential campaigns, so it is important to see where the candidates stand now that we have reached this point in time.

During the Aug. 24-30 period, five national polling entities surveyed the national electorate. The five: USA Today/Suffolk University, Rasmussen Reports, Fox News, Reuters/Ipsos, and The Economist/YouGov find a margin range of Hillary Clinton topping Donald Trump by seven percentage points (USA/Suffolk: Aug. 24-29, 1,000 US likely voters, 42-35-7-4 percent, including Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein) to the Republican going up by a single point (Rasmussen Reports; Aug. 29-30: 1,000 US likely voters, 40-39-7-3 percent).

Together, the five polls produce a net average Clinton edge of 3.0 percentage points with neither candidate exceeding 42 percent support nor dropping below 35 percent.

Turning to a historical comparison, where have other presidential campaigns stood on Sept. 1, and how can previous patterns help us project what may happen in this current election?

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The Historical Perspective

By Jim Ellis

Aug. 31, 2016 — Everyday we see new polls that measure Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s national standing and their status in some states, but how does the 2016 race compare to the others from the past 40 years during this same time point in the election cycle?

The Gallup organization is the only consistent national pollster from the mid-20th Century through the 2012 election. After missing the final result four years ago in which they predicted a Mitt Romney popular vote victory, Gallup now confines their research work to issues and not head-to-head ballot test questions. Therefore, they are not polling the Clinton-Trump race.

Since Aug. 20, seven polls from a combination of professional national pollsters, media outlets, and universities have been publicly released. Six of the seven find Clinton holding the lead. One, the Los Angeles Times/University of Southern California’s continual panel-back tracking program, says Trump is carrying a two-point advantage. Factoring in these recent seven results, Clinton’s average advantage is 3.4 percentage points, usually in the span of 42-38 percent.

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Hillary’s Bounce

By Jim Ellis

Aug. 3, 2016 — The national post-convention polls are quickly being reported into the public domain and, as time has progressed from the weekend into the beginning of this new week, Hillary Clinton’s advantage increases.

It’s not particularly surprising that the former Secretary of State’s post-conclave bounce would neutralize the gains that Donald Trump made the previous week when he officially accepted his nomination. In fact, the principle reason the Democrats scheduled their convention in the immediate week after the GOP national meeting was to blunt any sustained momentum the Republican nominee might develop.

In a poll taken throughout the Democratic convention week, Ipsos Reuters (July 25-29; 1,433 likely US voters) found Clinton leading Trump 40-35 percent. When Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson is added, Clinton and Trump tie at 37 percent, while the newcomer had five percent.

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Another House Member Set to Retire; A New Political Carter in Georgia

Rep. Howard Coble (R-NC-6), who has represented the Greensboro, N.C. area since his first “landslide” election in 1984 that featured a victory margin of less than 100 votes, announced that he will retire at the end of the current Congress. Coble, now 82 and dealing with health challenges, will close out 30 consecutive years of congressional service when his final term in office comes to an end at the beginning of 2015.

Though the 6th District is safely Republican and should not cause the national party any trouble in the replacement campaign, the Coble announcement yields the third such new open seat just this week. The grand total of 2014 open districts has now increases to 23, 16 of which are Republican held.

We can expect a spirited Republican primary, which is often the case when a region has not been open at the congressional level for a long period of time. Possibly the leading contender, and an individual who appears poised to run, is  Continue reading >