Ten months in, a plurality of Washingtonians still approve of Joe Biden’s job performance

As Pres­i­dent Joe Biden reach­es the ten month mark since his inau­gu­ra­tion, a new statewide poll con­duct­ed for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute finds that a near major­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton vot­ers still approve of the job he’s doing, with slight­ly more than four in ten dis­ap­prov­ing and a small per­cent­age not sure.

49% of Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers sur­veyed from Novem­ber 10th-11th said they approved of Biden’s job per­for­mance, while 43% dis­ap­proved. 7% were not sure.

Although Biden has worked hard to bring the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic under con­trol, restore com­pe­tence and eth­i­cal norms to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, and work with Con­gress to pass leg­is­la­tion to improve Amer­i­cans’ lives, he has faced almost unceas­ing attacks from Repub­li­cans as well as harsh cov­er­age from mass media out­lets, includ­ing not just right out­lets like Fox, but also news­pa­pers, tele­vi­sion net­works, and online media that claim to be objec­tive in their coverage.

Con­se­quent­ly, his approval rat­ings have been on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry, espe­cial­ly since mid-August, when the Tal­iban marched into Kab­ul and the NATO and Amer­i­can-backed Afghan gov­ern­ment col­lapsed, neces­si­tat­ing a mas­sive air­lift of Afghani allies from Hamid Karzai Inter­na­tion­al Airport.

How­ev­er, Biden remains above water here in Wash­ing­ton. His approval rat­ings aren’t as good as they were back in the spring, but they look a lot bet­ter than his nation­al num­bers. (In May, 54% of vot­ers we sur­veyed said they approved of Biden’s job per­for­mance, while 41% dis­ap­proved and 5% were not sure.)

As I not­ed back in May, Biden’s pre­de­ces­sor Don­ald Trump was nev­er above water in Wash­ing­ton State at any time dur­ing his pres­i­den­cy. Giv­en the degree of polar­iza­tion in our coun­try, the days when pres­i­dents could get sky-high approval rat­ings seem to be behind us, at least for the fore­see­able future.

Let’s take a look at Pres­i­dent Biden’s approval rat­ings by region.

First, here are the statewide num­bers again:

QUESTION: Do you approve or dis­ap­prove of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s job performance?

ANSWERS:

• Approve: 49%
• Dis­ap­prove: 43%
• Not sure: 7%

Now, here are the num­bers by region:

QUESTION: Do you approve or dis­ap­prove of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s job performance?

ANSWERS:

• King Coun­ty
  • Approve: 65%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 30%
  • Not sure: 4%
• North Puget Sound 
  • Approve: 37%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 41%
  • Not sure: 22%
• South Sound
  • Approve: 55%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 42%
  • Not sure: 3%
• Olympic Penin­su­la and South­west Washington 
  • Approve: 39%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 54%
  • Not sure: 7%
• East­ern and Cen­tral Washington 
  • Approve: 41%
  • Dis­ap­prove: 56%
  • Not sure: 3%

And here’s where sur­vey tak­ers are from:

• King Coun­ty: 31%
• North Puget Sound: 17%
• South Sound: 13%
• Olympic Penin­su­la and South­west Wash­ing­ton: 18%
• East­ern or Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton: 21%

Although Biden’s num­bers have slipped in King Coun­ty, North Puget Sound, and the Olympic Penin­su­la / South­west Wash­ing­ton regions since May, the Pres­i­dent is hold­ing steady in East­ern and Cen­tral Wash­ing­ton, and his South Sound num­bers are a lot bet­ter than they were back in the spring.

In fact, the South Sound num­bers are almost invert­ed from last spring.

That might sound strange, but it’s actu­al­ly pret­ty com­mon for there to be swings or vari­ances between the South Sound sub­am­ples in our statewide polls.

Because the South Sound sub­sam­ple is the small­est of all of our geo­graph­ic sub­sam­ples, it is espe­cial­ly prone to weird­ness. It has the high­est mar­gin of error of any geo­graph­ic sub­sam­ple in the survey.

This poll as a whole has a rea­son­ably low mar­gin of error, at just +/- 3.3%, due to its large sam­ple size (over nine hun­dred respon­dents participated).

But the South Sound’s mar­gin of error is around +/- 9%, since only 13% of the sur­vey tak­ers are from that region. It would be a mis­take to draw any sweep­ing con­clu­sions based on these geo­graph­ic sub­sam­ple per­cent­ages, espe­cial­ly the South Sound’s. While it’s nice to have some sense of how the regions break down, we have to be mind­ful that we’re run­ning up against the lim­i­ta­tions of what a statewide poll can tell us about pub­lic sen­ti­ments in a par­tic­u­lar area.