by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist
Longtime Democratic pollster John Zogby has always liked President Joe Biden.
“I think that he’ll be regarded as a great president,” he said Friday on a podcast he shares with his son Jeremy Zogby, also a pollster.
But even the Biden fan in chief sees a disaster around the corner for the Democrat’s reelection chances based on new polling from CNN.
“This new poll is catastrophic for the president,” said Zogby, who anchors the liberal desk in the Secrets Weekly White House Report Card published on Saturdays.
While concerned about Biden’s extremely low approval rating, “lower than his three immediate predecessors were at this stage,” Zogby focused on the Democratic numbers in the CNN survey that show liberals want Biden out of the race.
After flipping through Biden’s 39% approval rating and the feeling by a large majority that they are worse off under Biden, Zogby turned to those who don’t want Biden to run again, at an eye-popping 73%, he said.
“That includes up to 65% of Democrats, which is devastating,” Zogby said before turning to his son.
Jeremy Zogby is not a Biden homer or cheerleader and has doubted the president’s effectiveness since his first days in the White House. His analysis was equally biting.
“I knew it was catastrophic a hundred days in because, No. 1, Joe Biden did not live up to his promise of toning things down, being the adult in the room,” he said.
“Within a hundred days, his approval rating shot low, and it was the biggest collapse in modern presidential polling. About 900 days later, Joe Biden has, I believe, the lowest approval rating in modern presidential polling,” said Jeremy Zogby, the managing partner of the firm his father founded, John Zogby Strategies.
While they highlighted CNN’s finding that Biden and former President Donald Trump are about dead even in a 2024 head-to-head, John Zogby noted that minorities, especially blacks and Hispanics, are abandoning Biden and that that is a red warning flag.
What’s more, he talked up the finding that former Trump U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley would beat Biden in a head-to-head, something to consider as Trump faces dozens of charges that are likely to tie him up in court during the reelection.
“The next number is the one that I think is perhaps the most devastating of all,” John Zogby said. “In a head-to-head matchup against Nikki Haley, and this should be of the greatest concern to the White House, Nikki Haley scores 49% to Joe Biden’s 43%.”
“This is catastrophic,” Zogby said.