CNN
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President Joe Biden’s political standing has benefited greatly over the past few years from the failure of his predecessor, Donald Trump, to stay in the limelight. That’s part of the reason Biden’s Democrats had the best midterm election ever for a party to control the White House.
But in the first month of 2023, Biden announced he would be in the spotlight after classified documents were found at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and the Washington, D.C. office he used after serving as vice president. I noticed.
His political standing has taken a small but noticeable hit in the polls since then, but after the Republicans performed historically poorly in the midterm elections, Trump has been down in Republican preliminary polls. It seems to slow things down.
One of the alluring elements of a Biden presidency is that Americans still seem to be obsessed with Trump, even though he’s no longer president. I’ve long pointed out that more people search Trump than Biden on Google. But that was not the case in late January.
Of those who searched for either Biden or Trump, nearly 60% searched for Biden in the last two weeks. This is the highest percentage Biden has reached when compared to Trump in the late summer/fall of 2021. Biden’s search for Trump peaked in early September 2021, shortly after the US withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan.
This time stamp is also worth noting. Because Biden’s approval rating fell and overlapped with the time when he was not recovering. Since then, Biden’s approval ratings have averaged below his disapproval ratings in polls.
After more people searched Biden’s name on Google last week, a number of polls confirmed his drop in approval ratings. rose. His approval rating among registered voters is 46%, down from his 48% in December, according to a CNN/SSRS poll.
Neither is a big drop, and both are within the margin of error of the polls. But when viewed together in the context of poll averages, they are remarkable. Biden’s average approval rating is down about 2.5 percentage points from two weeks ago (when it was at its highest level since 2021).
Now, with the discovery of classified documents and the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the matter, we don’t necessarily know that Biden’s approval ratings are falling. The issue is related to his presidency.
Still, there’s no question that Biden isn’t helped by the story of classified documents. Most Americans, at the very least, think he did something unethical in his handling of classified material.
With all the attention on Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump seems to be taking a step back. Even after declaring his third run for the Republican presidential nomination late last year, Trump really kicked off his campaign this weekend, with only stops in New Hampshire and South Carolina on Saturday.
If you look at the number of people searching Trump on Google, you can see that he was inactive. Since he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015, fewer people have looked into him this month than in any other month.
This does not appear to have influenced Trump’s 2024 bid. If anything, it helped. Trump’s national poll numbers were in free fall in November after a bad midterm election for the Republican (opposition) by historical standards.
In concrete terms, Trump’s national poll lead, which was about 30 points ahead of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the hypothetical Republican primary, fell to low double digits almost overnight.
But Trump’s fortunes have been stable since then. If the other candidates are included, he leads DeSantis by double digits in national polls.In December, he showed DeSantis a clear edge in the gambling market, which now Trump is in Florida. It shows that you are on par with the Governor.
The question is what happens when Trump is in the limelight like this weekend. Will it remind Republican voters of what they like about him, or will it remind voters of what they don’t like about Trump?
In the latter case, don’t be surprised if the most profitable candidate isn’t the same Republican.
Rather, it could be the person who became Trump’s successor in the White House and has faced a lot of unfavorable press over the past few weeks.
