A Look At Biden’s Approval Rating Among Religious Groups
(ANALYSIS) One thing I try my best to avoid is posts that are just big dump of graphs that are repetitive. I think that social science, at its best, is storytelling with better methods. We have a question, we have data, we have the tools to analyze that data, and it helps us understand the world around us. All good dissertations start with a puzzle and end with a resolution.
I guess there is a question that motivates this post but it’s about as simple as it’s going to get: How is Joe Biden doing among a bunch of different religious groups?
I did a post about it late last year, but I feel like it’s absolutely essential that I take stock of this situation given that there’s an election happening in November.
I had to just give you all a big graph dump with the same type of graph over and over again, but consider this more of an encyclopedia entry than what you typically see from me. It’s more of a reference to come back to than anything else.
Asking about presidential approval is about as straightforward as it gets, and there are four response options ranging from strongly disapprove to strongly approve. The question was posed in the Fall of 2021, 2022, and 2023. Let’s get to it.
This should come as no surprise to anyone — White evangelicals do not like President Biden. They never really did and they certainly don’t like him now. His approval rating in 2023 was 18%. But on the positive side for him, the “strongly disapprove” column got a bit smaller. It was only 71% in 2023, down about three points from prior surveys.
Non-White evangelicals are a much different story and very much a mixed bag. In 2021, Biden was barely underwater with this group: 48% approval, 52% disapproval. It was the same in 2022. In the most recent data, his unfavorables have crept up to 55%.
That’s not a good sign for a president who needs to win in places like Arizona. Going from -4 to -10 among non-White evangelicals should be a bit of wake-up call to his reelection team.
To read the rest of Ryan Burge’s column, click here.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.