Is Joe Biden actually that unpopular, or is polarization distorting his approval rating? | No. 180 — January 23, 2022

In which I show you some math that illustrates why you need to take polarization into account when comparing Biden's approval rating presidents'

Harry Enten, an elections and polling analyst for CNN, writes this weekend that “Only Trump was in worse electoral shape than Biden after his first year as president.” His article focuses on historical job approval ratings, and he writes::

Start out by just looking at his overall job approval ratings. Biden has an approval rating of only about 41% and a disapproval rating of 54% in an average of polls. This makes for a net approval rating of -13 points.

Biden's poor ratings are quite a turnaround from where he was earlier. In the middle of September, his net approval rating was -3 points. Biden stood at +11 points in the middle of May. His first net approval rating of his presidency was +19 points.

No elected president in the polling era besides Trump has ever had a negative net approval at this point in his presidency. Trump's was at -17 points and was actually improving. Biden's is stagnant if not down a touch.

Indeed. Here are the presidents’ approval ratings on this day in previous pr…