…the trend in President Biden’s job approval has to be concerning for Democrats:
But Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate were slated to drop off quickly if the president’s job approval fell any further. At 50%, they would be expected to break even, but would lose control about one time out of four. At 49% job approval, the Senate is considered 50-50.
At 46%? Democrats would lose between four and zero seats 95% of the time, with an expected outcome of two seats. They only retain control about 4% of the time. This is obviously an outcome Democrats would like to avoid.
What we see from this is that the decline in President Bidens’ job approval from around 52% to 46% is consistent with a loss of an additional 5% of the Democrats’ caucus, or an additional 11 seats. If we put them altogether into a single regression analysis, we explain about two-thirds of the overall variation. This isn’t so bad, given the amount of randomness we have to explain here. The model suggests overall that the decline in Biden’s job approval will probably cost Democrats about eight seats. Read more…