Think Biden’s doing badly? Check out the polling for these other Western leaders

President Biden‘s standing in polls is bad — generating panic among many Democrats and a raft of theories about what’s wrong.

He’s too conservative, say progressives; too liberal, according to centrists.

And, of course, nearly everyone mentions his age.

But what if all of that misses the real story? What if the main problem Biden faces isn’t Biden at all?

Tough to be an incumbent

Biden is 81. No question that’s a problem politically. But if age were the sole driver of poll standing, what would explain the position of 51-year-old Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau? His current approval rating — 31%, according to Canada’s Angus Reid Institute — makes Biden’s 38% in the FiveThirtyEight.com average of polls look almost balmy.

One could argue that Trudeau is a special case: He recently began his ninth year in office and may have worn out his welcome.

But if so, what is there to say about British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak? He’s been in office barely a year, and just 21% of Britons are satisfied with the job he’s doing, according to the latest Ipsos poll. The opposition Labor Party leads Sunak’s Conservatives 41%-24% in a hypothetical look at the next British election, which Sunak must call by January 2025.

Maybe Sunak’s problem is that his party has run out of steam after 13 years in power under five prime ministers. But that wouldn’t explain the travails of Germany‘s Olaf Scholz. The governing coalition of his Social Democratic party, the Green party and the Free Democrats took power just two years ago. Only 17% of Germans approve of how they are doing, according to a new poll by Germany’s public broadcasting network.

Scholz, of course, suffers from the fallout of the war in Ukraine, which has strained his coalition and driven up prices in Germany. But that doesn’t explain the poor position of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whose approval rating dropped this week to a new low of 17%.

I could go on, but by now, the point should be clear: Around the world, leaders of wealthy, developed nations are struggling with poor approval ratings. For each one, there are individual factors often cited to explain their problems — age, lengthy tenure, domestic policy disagreements, a financial scandal in Japan. Those factors are all real and have an impact.

But stand back and look at the overall pattern, and it’s hard not to conclude that something larger is at work.

Lower ratings for presidents

A similar pattern emerges if we look at the approval ratings of presidents over the last 70 years.

Starting with President Eisenhower and running through President George H.W. Bush, American leaders for 40 years spent most of their tenure with approval ratings above 50%. The periods when presidents dropped below 50% corresponded to major national traumas — escalation of the Vietnam War in the last few years of President Johnson’s tenure, the Watergate scandal for President Nixon and the Iran hostage crisis for President Carter.

The last 20 years — since President George W. Bush‘s reelection in 2004 — shows the mirror image: Except for brief periods, including honeymoons at the beginning of their tenures, none of the presidents since then have popped above 50% for a sustained time. President Trump never got majority approval in his entire four years in office; Biden was above 50% for his initial months but soon dropped below.

As with the international comparison, one can pick out individual reasons why each president has failed to gain majority support, but the persistent pattern suggests a larger explanation.

Stagnation and trauma

The potential explanation isn’t a secret: Presidents like Eisenhower enjoyed majority approval during a period of sustained and widely shared economic growth that raised living standards for most Americans. Not long after that persistent growth gave way to income stagnation and rising inequality, the comfortable approval ratings for presidents became a thing of the past.

Globally, middle-income countries have seen big increases in living standards in the last couple of decades, and abject poverty around the world has declined a lot, but average living standards in many wealthy countries have plateaued.

Income stagnation isn’t the only problem wealthy countries have faced. High levels of immigration have brought enormous benefits and dynamism but have also increased social tension. Countries such as Japan, which resisted immigration, have suffered from rapid aging of their populations as birthrates declined. Changing gender roles and cultural diversity have brought more equality — and backlashes.

Those factors contributed to a sharp decline in the belief that political leaders are looking out for the interests of average citizens.

Trust in government has fallen in the U.S. as the share of Americans who think the country is on the wrong track rose, and partisan lines have hardened. All that leads to lower job approval for presidents.

Layer on top of that the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I wrote recently, a lot of Americans have tried to put the pandemic behind them and have stopped talking about it. But the trauma it caused worldwide won’t go away so easily: We remain a society in recovery.

Biden’s problem

The fact that Biden shares his unpopularity with other leaders doesn’t make his difficulties any less real. The comparison with others should, however, make people a bit more skeptical of the belief that some other Democrat would do significantly better. If the underlying reality in all these countries is that unhappy voters punishing whichever party is in power, then replacing Biden with another face won’t necessarily solve anything.

Nonetheless, Biden does face serious difficulties, as the numbers from a new survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center show.

In Pew’s survey, just one-third of Americans approved of Biden’s job performance, and 64% disapproved. His standing has dropped significantly since the beginning of the year, especially among his fellow Democrats: Biden’s approval within his party has dropped from 73% late last year to just 61% now, Pew found.

Restiveness on the left — over the Israel-Hamas war, in particular — has gotten a lot of attention, but the Pew numbers suggest that’s not the main source of Biden’s troubles. Among Democrats who describe themselves as liberal, 66% approve of his performance; among those who identify as moderate or conservative 57% do.

Former President Obama went through a similar, although less deep, decline in support among fellow Democrats at this point in his presidency. He succeeded in rallying Democrats, in part by depicting his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, as a plutocrat unsympathetic to the problems of ordinary Americans.

White House aides have made no secret of their plan to try to do likewise by focusing voters on Trump’s faults, and the former president has a knack for reminding voters of what they dislike about him. Once he’s more consistently in the spotlight, that’s likely to make a difference.

But Biden and his allies shouldn’t count on incumbency, itself, to deliver a victory: These days, it’s no longer clear that it’s even an advantage.

A surge in antisemitism

The Israel-Hamas war has intensified debate over antisemitism. This much is clear: It’s on the rise

Like a plague that long lay dormant, antisemitism has sprung back to virulence in the U.S., deeply unsettling American Jews, many of whom had viewed it as a relic of past generations, destined to fade away. The upsurge began before the war in Gaza and has now accelerated, bringing intense debate over how to define an ancient hatred in modern times — in particular, where robust opposition to Israel or Zionism crosses the line into antisemitism, Jaweed Kaleem and I reported.

The latest from Washington

California is losing clout in the U.S. Capitol

For nearly five years, California reigned supreme in the U.S. House of Representatives, with the speaker’s gavel passing uninterrupted across party lines from Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield). The nation’s most populous state enjoyed years of strength in Washington, where long-serving Californians held plum committee assignments, wielded vast influence and dispensed sage advice to less-experienced lawmakers. But a slew of House retirements in recent years and the death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein have chipped away at California’s Capitol Hill clout, Julia Wick reported.

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For companies that want to appear eco-friendly and ethical, B Corp certification has long been considered a coveted badge of honor. Plastered on the shopping bags of Los Angeles grocer Erewhon as well as cartons of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and Seventh Generation household cleaners, the seal is meant to signify membership in a selective group of businesses committed to “transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.” But an increasing number of B Corps are voicing concerns about the standards used to assess members, raising questions about rapid growth in the number and size of companies being certified, Jie Jenny Zou reported.

Vulnerable California Republicans vote for Biden impeachment inquiry

House Republicans on Wednesday voted to formalize an impeachment inquiry against Biden, intensifying their investigation into unproven allegations that the president benefited from his son’s overseas business dealings. The vote is a formality, but it puts the House GOP — including vulnerable California members who face competitive reelection contests next year — on record in support of moving toward impeaching Biden, Erin Logan and Matt Hamilton reported.

Supreme Court agrees to rule on FDA’s approval of abortion pills sent by mail

The Supreme Court said Wednesday it will decide whether to put stricter limits on abortion pills that are now the most common method for ending early pregnancies. The justices voted to hear the Biden administration’s appeal and reconsider rulings by conservative judges in Texas who disagreed with the Food and Drug Administration’s view that mifepristone is safe and effective and may be dispensed widely, David G. Savage reported.

Supreme Court agrees to hear case that could weaken the prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants, Trump

The court also cast some doubt Wednesday on hundreds of criminal charges and convictions arising from the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, including one of the charges pending against Trump. Many defendants who broke into the Capitol were charged under a law that makes it a crime to “corruptly ... obstruct ... an official proceeding.” The justices agreed to hear an appeal from one of the Jan. 6 defendants whose lawyers claim he did not violate the law in question because he was not seeking to destroy documents or evidence, Savage reported.

Hunter Biden refuses subpoena from Congress, saying he wants to testify publicly

Hunter Biden, the president’s son, refused Wednesday to sit for closed-door questioning by Republican lawmakers investigating his business dealings and said that he would testify only in a public hearing, Hamilton reported.

The latest from California

Huntington Beach is sticking it to ‘woke’ California. Some residents ask at what cost

In most cities, the work of local elected officials — passing budgets, maintaining infrastructure and approving contracts — is carried out without much fanfare. But this year, the Huntington Beach City Council has taken on a range of issues not endemic to day-to-day operations, landing the town known as Surf City smack in the center of the nation’s culture wars, Hannah Fry reported.

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