3 poll numbers that should scare Democrats

If the central argument for President Joe Biden’s election in 2020 was his competence and decades of experience in Washington, three numbers in a new nationwide Quinnipiac University poll are a warning shot for the White House and Democrats as they look to hold their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.

Here they are: 56, 61, and 62. And how Democrats respond to those numbers could make all the difference in the world this November.

Let’s take that first number first: It’s the percentage of the poll’s registered voter respondents who said they disapprove of Biden’s job performance. Barely a third of those more plugged-in respondents, 37 percent, said they approved, while 7 percent said they had no opinion.

Now for that second number, 61 percent: It’s the percentage of respondents who say they disapprove of Biden’s management of the economy. As NPR reports, that’s a problem for Biden, but not for the reason you’d think.

Despite empty shelves and rising prices, the economy is actually humming along at a pretty good clip. During Biden’s first year in office, the economy created 6.6 million new jobs, which the president noted during a press conference last week.

“If you can’t remember another year when so many people went to work in this country, there’s a reason: It never happened,” Biden said, urging journalists to review economic statistics dating back to the Reagan administration. “History has been made here."

Even so, as the numbers make clear, Americans surveying empty grocery store shelves don’t share that optimism. Biden has tried to stress that congressional authorization of his Build Back Better plan will help tame costs for such items as prescription medication and childcare.

This week, national Democrats also pivoted to a more esoteric strategy, lambasting Republicans for staging a boycott of the White House’s picks to the Federal Reserve Board. The chances are better than 50-50 that most Americans can’t name a single member of the central bank, whose policies will play a central role in getting inflation under control. But Democrats are clearly hoping the message will penetrate.

Now about that third number: 62 percent. That’s the percentage of respondents who disapprove of the administration’s response to the wave of gun violence that’s gripped some of America’s largest cities.

After calls in 2020 to defund the police amid a summer of police shootings and ensuing civil rights protests, some cities are now heading in the opposite direction and are bulking up their funding for law enforcement. Sixteen U.S cities, including Philadelphia, saw a spike in shootings last year, according to Stateline.org.

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