As President Biden approaches his 150th day in office, one could say that this administration’s honeymoon is officially over. And as to be expected, Biden’s job approval has decreased from Q1 to Q2, with the Bullfinch Group’s nationwide survey of adults showing a deterioration of a net -7 points.
“Is that bad???”
No, it’s actually pretty great when considering the average job approval deterioration new presidents see from first taking office to their first June in office. To put these numbers into perspective, I have taken the RealClearPolitics job approval averages for the last four Presidents, from taking office to their first June.
In looking at these numbers, we see that President Trump’s approval deteriorated a net -14 points, and Obama and Bush’s both deteriorated a net -18 points during the same timeframe.
So, when seeing our recent data from Q1 to Q2 on Biden’s approval, I tend to think his numbers are holding up well.
The other numbers that stood out to me from our data was the amount of people who were not familiar enough with Critical Race Theory or were too unsure about their stance on the issue to say whether they support or oppose using Critical Race Theory as a tool in education.
In looking at the data, it looks like adults who support critical race theory being taught in schools are fine with it; meaning those who somewhat support it slightly outpace those who strongly support:
22% Total Support
12% Somewhat support
10% Strongly support
Americans who oppose critical race theory loath it entirely, with strong opposition nearly 4x greater than somewhat opposition:
28% Total Oppose
6% Somewhat oppose
22% Strongly oppose
But, if you are not familiar enough with it, or are unsure about your stance on critical race, you are in the plurality; half of adults neither support nor oppose Critical Race Theory being used as a tool in education:
50% Neither support nor oppose
42% I am not familiar enough with Critical Race Theory
8% Unsure
My assessment: If you’re advocating for Critical Race Theory, your opposition is dug in – you aren’t changing those minds. However, there is a silver lining: you have a massive pool of people that still do not know enough about the issue to form an opinion, so by and large, the ‘public’ is your target (…fairly straight forward microtargeting if you ask me).
