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President Joe Biden has been characterized by a consistent disconnect between his accomplishments and his popularity. Biden has done much of what voters sent him to Washington, but his approval ratings are among the worst of any president seeking a second term.
There are various explanations for why voters are dissatisfied with Biden, who defeated Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by more than 7 million votes. But what may be the hardest thing for Biden to fix is that some key voters have no idea what he did during his presidency.
According to monthly focus groups conducted by public policy researcher Rich Tau, some voters who switched from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020 (the coveted “swing voters”) We are surprisingly unaware of what Biden has done as president.
“I can’t overstate how ignorant people are about what Biden did during his presidency,” Tau said during a recent webcast hosted by Republican pollster Bruce Melman. No,” he said. “There’s been all this legislative activity in Washington since Biden became president, and it’s like it never happened. To me, that’s great.”
If the election is close, a small group of floating voters in key states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada could easily decide the outcome. To that end, Mr. Tau records online video sessions with a small group of voters who fit this profile (usually 5-7 of him per session) and asks them their opinions on various issues related to national elections. .
In one mashup, Tau asked how many participants knew that Congress passed a bipartisan infrastructure bill in 2021. Answer: None.
Tau asked if anyone could name anything Biden has done to address climate change. Then again, no one knows that Biden signed the largest green energy stimulus package in U.S. history in 2022.
Tau asked if anyone could name one bill that Biden would like to see passed by Congress. Even though Biden is effectively pleading with Congress to pass immigration reform to resolve the chaos at the Southwest border, additional aid to Ukraine, and a series of spending bills to keep the government running, no one I can’t think of anything either.
These voters are not idiots paraded around for political elites to ridicule. Tau is recruiting people who see voting as a civic duty and put a lot of effort into deciding who to support. They say they get their news from mainstream news networks like NBC, ABC, NPR and Yahoo, as well as Google Web Search and social media sites like TikTok and Facebook.
However, none of the important news they see is communicated. “My group has a huge problem of lack of information,” Tau said on Melman’s webcast.
Focus groups are different from opinion polls. These provide an anecdotal snapshot of what people are thinking rather than quantitative data on the direction of public opinion. But Tau’s point may help explain the widespread gloom, even though the economy is healthy and Biden has taken many actions that should be popular.
A recent poll finds that a majority of Americans think the economy is in bad shape, even though economic growth is strong, unemployment is low, and the stock market is at record highs. did. Although Mr. Biden has repeatedly boasted of record job growth during his presidency, his approval rating remains below 40%.
The catch for Biden is that the big economic problem of inflation doesn’t need to be seen on the news for people to understand. They see it every day on their grocery bills and rent checks, and they don’t need politicians to explain how it crushes their purchasing power.
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Inflation has fallen sharply from a high of 9% in June 2022 to just 3.1% today. However, most price increases are still ongoing. The rate of increase has only slowed. When people suffer a financial blow, it’s understandable that they have a hard time believing that the pain is over or forgiving those responsible.
As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, Biden plans to cancel student loans, lower drug prices, revitalize domestic manufacturing, strengthen labor unions, provide more affordable housing, combat junk fees, and more. He hopes his efforts to improve the lives of ordinary people in many ways will outweigh current policies. He will stimulate inflation and drive voters back in his direction.
But for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, he hasn’t been able to make a breakthrough. Maybe voters aren’t as interested as they claim to be, or social media trends are burying the real news, or the negative atmosphere around them is creating the impression that everything is terrible.
Whatever the reason, Biden needs to find new ways to let voters know what he’s been doing. There are some positives for Biden. Floating voters are also tired of Trump and don’t want to return to his rough-and-tumble style of governing. But if Trump is too loud, Biden is either too quiet or just talking in a room where no one is listening.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist in the United States. Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @rickjnewman.
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