For Joe Biden, a steep dip in Wisconsin popularity erases an advantage over Donald Trump

One key to the presidential rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is that both men are more unpopular now than they were the last time they faced each other.

But for President Biden, this represents a lost advantage.

His poll ratings were much more positive than Trump’s four years ago. Now they are just as bad, if not worse.

In the battleground state of Wisconsin, Biden’s image has declined in almost every segment of the electorate.

But some of the sharpest declines have occurred among large categories of voters that either favored Biden in 2020 or moved in a Democratic direction that year.

Among them: moderates, suburbanites and women.

Biden’s standing with many groups of voters has gone from positive or neutral at the time of the last election to negative in 2024 — an obvious danger sign for his re-election effort.

This is a look at how the president’s popularity has declined among different segments of the Wisconsin electorate. The caveat here is that popularity is not the same thing as vote share. How popular Biden is in the spring of 2024 is not a perfect predictor of how he’ll perform against Trump in the November election. That’s especially true in a year when so many voters dislike both candidates.

At the same time, the decline in Biden’s popularity since the last election and his high negatives among many key segments of the electorate underscore the president’s vulnerability in this election.

To get a sense of where the greatest erosion in Biden’s standing has occurred in Wisconsin, Marquette Law School pollster Charles Franklin and I looked at polling trends since 2020 across different political, demographic and geographic slices of the voting public.

We measured Biden’s popularity based on “net favorability”: the percentage of registered voters who view him favorably minus the share who view him unfavorably. (If 45% are favorable and 50% are unfavorable, that’s a rating of “minus 5”).

To get meaningful samples of smaller groups of voters, we pooled multiple surveys. Biden’s popularity in the fall of 2020 is based on three Marquette polls from September and October of that year.  His “current” popularity is based on Marquette’s three most recent surveys taken over the past six months.

(We did the same analysis for Trump in a separate column).

Overall, Biden’s popularity among registered voters in Wisconsin has dropped from “plus 1” to “minus 17” between these two time periods.  In the most recent polls, 41% of voters viewed him positively and 58% viewed him negatively.

Trump’s rating has dropped from minus 11 to minus 18 over the same period. In the most recent polls, 40% of voters viewed him positively and 58% negatively — almost identical to Biden’s numbers.

So, where has Biden lost the most ground?

His biggest declines have occurred mostly among groups that gave him positive or neutral ratings during the last election.

To cite one dramatic example, Biden’s net rating among white women without college degrees has declined by 31 points since the eve of the 2020 election, from plus 7 to minus 24.

This is a category of voters that is closely watched in Wisconsin for a variety of reasons.  It is large (about 28% of the state’s registered voters). It is not dominated by either party.  And it represents a window into two familiar fault lines in the electorate: gender and education.  These voters are on the blue side of the gender gap (women lean Democratic), but on the red side of the education gap (non-college voters lean Republican).

In Marquette’s polling on the eve of the 2020 election, they favored Biden by 6 points over Trump. But combining the last three Marquette polls on the 2024 election, this group of voters favors Trump by 8 points.

ANALYSIS: Over 4 years of Wisconsin polling, Donald Trump's popularity has declined with parts of his base

Gauging Joe Biden's popularity across key voter groups

Here’s what has happened to Biden’s popularity since the fall of 2020 across several broad categories that pollsters routinely track:

Gender: Biden’s ratings have slipped more among women than men. They have slipped more among non-college women than women with college degrees.   And they have slipped far more among rural women than urban or suburban women.  Biden had a rating of plus 16 among rural women in the fall of 2020, but a rating of minus 22 over the last six months — a drop in his net rating of 38 points.

Ideology: Biden’s popularity has declined more among self-described moderates than among liberals or conservatives.  He had a plus 30 rating among moderates in the fall of 2020, but a minus 3 rating in the three most recent polls.

Community type. The president’s standing has declined more among suburban voters than among rural or urban ones, and more among suburban men than suburban women.  He had an almost neutral rating (minus 2) among suburban voters in advance of the 2020 election, but a minus 28 rating in the recent polling.

Region. Biden has lost more ground in the very Democratic city of Milwaukee than in other regions of the state, according to these favorability ratings, though the sample sizes for Milwaukee voters are on the small side: a little over 200 voters for each of these two time periods. His decline has been almost as big in the Green Bay media market of northeastern Wisconsin, where his ratings have gone from neutral (plus 1) to negative (minus 25).  The smallest decline in Biden’s popularity has occurred in the state’s northern and western counties, where Biden’s image was already negative in 2020, and is now a little more so.

Age. Biden has lost more ground among voters in the middle of the age spectrum (from 30 to 59) than he has among older voters and younger voters.  

Religion.  Biden has suffered big declines among Catholics, mainline Protestants and born-again Protestants (this last group is easily the most anti-Biden group by religion). By contrast, his standing has barely changed among non-religious voters (about a quarter of the vote), going from plus 22 to plus 19.  By this measure, his popularity has held up better with this group than almost any other segment of the electorate we measured.

Race and ethnicity.  Biden has lost more ground among Hispanic voters than white voters and hasn’t lost any ground among Black voters in the Marquette polling. The big qualifier here is that our polling samples of Black and Hispanic voters are very small because Wisconsin is an overwhelmingly white state.  But his decline among Hispanic voters is consistent with most national polling.  Among white voters, Biden’s popularity has dropped more among women than men, and more among “non-college” women than college women.

Partisanship. Biden has lost popularity among independents, Democrats and Republicans alike.  But the largest decline has occurred in his own party. His rating with Democratic voters has dropped from plus 81 to plus 63. Among Republicans, it has gone from minus 77 to minus 91. And among independents, it has gone from minus 4 to minus 14.

What are some broad takeaways from all these numbers?

One is that for the most part, Biden has slipped more among groups that gave him a favorable rating in 2020 than among groups that gave him an unfavorable one.

There are different ways to look at this. One explanation is that it’s basic math at work: Biden had more ground to lose among segments of the electorate where his standing was higher. When you are at minus 77 with GOP voters, you can’t drop much further.  The only sizable segment of the electorate we measured where Biden’s ratings haven’t declined since 2020 is rural men. But Biden was already very unpopular with this group in 2020 (minus 37) and remains just as unpopular with them today.

There could be other explanations as well.  Some of these groups with the biggest declines (moderates, suburbanites, women) are very broad and not heavily dominated by one party, meaning they’re less “anchored” in place by their politics. They may be more influenced by economic concerns and frustration, or their perceptions of Biden’s leadership.

The polling doesn’t really tell us why Biden’s popularity has ebbed more among some groups than others. But losing lots of ground among competitive segments of the electorate is a sobering trend for any incumbent.

In many cases, these are voting groups where Biden had succeeded in growing his popularity over the course of the 2020 campaign, and as a result were very important to his narrow victory in Wisconsin.

For example, Biden’s rating among rural women in Wisconsin rose sharply from when he was competing for the Democratic nomination in early 2020 (minus 11) to the eve of the general election in 2020 (plus 16).  But now he is at minus 22 with these voters, meaning his gains in the 2020 campaign have been more than wiped out.

Biden’s rating among moderate voters rose from plus 13 to plus 30 over the last campaign. But they have now dropped to minus 3.

The big election question posed by the incumbent’s slide in popularity is whether he can perform as well as he did against Trump in 2020 among groups that view him much more negatively today than they did back then.

The answer will probably vary from one group to another. It will also depend on Trump’s standing with these voters.

For example, Biden’s slippage in his own party could portend a dip in Democratic turnout. But these voters are unlikely to shift toward Trump, who they overwhelmingly dislike. And their dislike of Trump could prove strong enough to bolster Democratic turnout.

Biden’s erosion among moderate voters may be more ominous. They are an important part of Biden’s voting coalition, but more “in play” than voters at the right or left ends of the spectrum.  As a group, they remain far more negative toward Trump than Biden, but their views of Biden are much more mixed than four years ago.

Biden’s popularity rating could always improve. And our measure of his “current” popularity stretches back several months so that we could bring more polls into the analysis. Biden’s popularity hasn’t changed that much in the past two years, but we have the bulk of the 2024 campaign ahead of us.

The thing that makes this analysis even trickier is that as ugly as some of these numbers look for Biden, his opponent has very high negatives of his own.

In a follow-up column, I will be looking at Trump’s standing across these same segments of the Wisconsin electorate and how it has changed since the 2020 election.

Craig Gilbert provides Wisconsin political analysis as a fellow with Marquette University Law School's Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education. Prior to the fellowship, Gilbert reported on politics for 35 years at the Journal Sentinel, the last 25 in its Washington Bureau. His column continues that independent reporting tradition and goes through the established Journal Sentinel editing process.

Follow him on Twitter: @Wisvoter.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Biden's drop in Wisconsin popularity erases advantage over Trump