Biden is unpopular, but Democrats lead 2022 polls. What gives?

These numbers, taken from FiveThirtyEight’s polling averages, are confusing. Historically, when voters dislike a president, they vent their frustration by voting against his party in Congress. Yet the best measure of whether voters like Biden — his approval rating — seems utterly unrelated to how well House Democrats are polling in the midterm elections.

So, to resolve this conundrum, I tracked what factors led to increases and decreases in Biden’s presidential approval rating, and what events led to changes in national House polls.

Biden’s job approval measures voters’ economic pain and how they view his competence in getting his agenda through Congress. National House polls, by contrast, reflect how Americans feel about the two parties, rather than the Oval Office occupant. These trends might seem intuitive. But they contradict a long-standing political rule of thumb: that midterm elections are a referendum on the sitting president.

Americans judge Biden on economics and competence

Biden’s net approval rating rises and falls with economic indicators and assessments of his general effectiveness. A few key rises and falls stand out.

The first drop happened as Biden withdrew U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Americans had long wanted to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they also felt Biden executed the withdrawal poorly. Afghanistan immediately fell to the Taliban, and the president appeared to be deeply in over his head.

The second shift was more of a slow-motion stumble. From the fall of 2021 through the early summer of 2022, Biden attempted to pass a climate protection bill, expand the social safety net, enact voting rights reform and more. But he couldn’t get his plans through Congress — and some traditionally Democratic groups lost faith.

During this period, inflation soared and gas prices climbed. As others have pointed out, when Americans paid more at the pump, Biden paid a political price.

By late July 2022, the weight of economic misery and policy failures had dragged Biden down to a 38 percent approval rating, with 57 percent disapproving.

More recently, Biden’s standing has improved. Gas prices were dropping until of late — though they might rise again, following OPEC’s decision to cut oil production. Inflation has, at least momentarily, let up. Unemployment is only 3.5 percent. And Biden finally persuaded moderate Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) to back the Inflation Reduction Act, a slimmed-down version of Build Back Better that includes climate provisions and more.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization certainly helped Biden, too — but the ups and downs in his approval seem clearly driven by economics and evaluations of his competence.

Midterm polls track party fights

National House polls, by contrast, change in response to the political — and policy — performance of the parties as a whole.

The first shift occurred between the middle of October 2021 and January 2022. During this period, Democrats suffered policy and political difficulties.

We’ve already detailed some of these troubles: Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, but they couldn’t deliver on 2020 campaign promises. As a result, they performed poorly in the 2021 elections in Virginia and New Jersey, and Republicans gained on Democrats in national House polls.

The GOP kept those gains for much of the summer. Then the Dobbs ruling changed everything.

Voters largely know where Republicans and Democrats stand on abortion — and most Americans sit between the two poles, favoring the right to an abortion in the first trimester but opposing it later in a pregnancy. So when Republicans started pushing — and in some cases passing — new strict abortion bans after Dobbs, voters pushed back and gave Democrats an edge in national House polls.

Economic forces, such as decreasing gas prices and slowing inflation, may have helped Democrats in this period, too. But over the past year and a half, political events — such as Dobbs or Democrats’ struggles to pass legislation in the latter part of 2021 — have more closely tracked shifts in midterm polling.

A break from history?

If Biden’s net approval — the difference between his approval rating and his disapproval rating — were the only factor in the midterm elections, the Republicans would win the House by a healthy margin. But, instead, two strong political forces — voters’ discontent with Biden and their frustration with the GOP on abortion — are pushing against each other.

Voters still might start to blame Democrats for the economy and Biden’s policy disappointments, allowing the GOP to retake the lead before November. But for now, they’re letting Democrats distance themselves from Biden — and, at least momentarily, defy historical trends.