Saturday subscribers-only thread: The vanishing link between Joe Biden's job approval and new covid-19 cases

Views about how the president has handled the virus are now fully baked in to his approval

Apr 17, 2022

∙ Paid

Dear subscribers,

Happy Saturday — and let’s get straight into the newsletter.

For a good portion of the last year, I have seen people claim that there is a link between the number of new cases of covid-19 across the country and Joe Biden’s job approval rating. Some people have really committed themselves to this theory, arguing every time there’s a new wave of infections that Biden’s numbers will bump up once the number of new daily cases falls back down. The macro-story here, as I’ve read it, goes that people react negatively to worsening public-health conditions; that Biden gets less popular as waves of new cases swell and regains some ground as they fade.

The problem with this theory is that there is basically no evidence to support it. And there never really has been, either.

Take a look at the following two charts. This one shows the number of new (reported) cases of coronavirus in America since February 2020:

And this is Joe Biden’s job approval rating according to FiveThirtyEight:

Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of G. Elliott Morris.

Or purchase a paid subscription.