Jonathan Bernstein: “You’re going to hear plenty of explanations, but if you actually want to know what happened, it’s pretty straightforward. This is the 11th out of the last 12 times that the president’s party lost the Virginia gubernatorial election — the numbers in New Jersey are similar — and with President Joe Biden currently at 43% approval measured by public opinion polls, the result was pretty much what one would expect.”
“If Biden is at 43% or lower a year from now, the chances are very good that Republicans will win big in the midterms. Of course, the next question is why Biden’s popularity has slumped, but the bulk of that is surely about the latest pandemic wave and a mediocre economic quarter. Sure, other things may have mattered on the margins, both for Biden’s popularity and the Virginia and New Jersey elections, and the margins can be extremely important when it comes to winning and losing. But the big picture isn’t very complicated. Republicans are doing well because there’s an incumbent Democrat president, and he’s not very popular right now.”
Geoffrey Skelley: “One inescapable fact about this election is that it took place in an environment that was favorable to Republicans. There’s no better indicator of that than President Biden’s poor approval rating, which stood at about 43% coming into Election Day in FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker.”
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