Dan Pfeiffer: “As we think about 2022, we should focus a little more on Biden’s disapproval rating. In the aforementioned ABC/Washington Post poll, only 42 percent of respondents disapprove of Biden’s job performance. Based on recent history, this number is impressively low. At this point in his Presidency, Trump’s disapproval was 53 percent. Biden’s number is only three points higher than Bill Clinton’s at the 100-day mark in a radically less polarized era. Biden hasn’t gotten Republican voters to like him, but he has prevented them from hating him – a truly remarkable achievement.”

“And one that bodes well for 2022 if it continues. Republicans need high turnout in the midterms, which might be difficult to achieve without Trump on the ballot if they can’t turn Biden into a scary and hated figure. In the future, I think we should focus less on the overall approval number and look at the gap between approval and disapproval. Politicians that can be loved by their own party while being hated by fewer people in the other party might end up having the most political success. I recognize this seems like a patently obvious observation, but it is rarely considered in poll analysis. Ultimately, analysts and strategists need to figure out which messages, policies, and candidate attributes drive turnout among their voters and depress it for the other side. Those answers will be impossible to find if we continue to simplistically obsess about Presidential approval ratings.”