According to recent reports, President Biden’s approval rating has dropped to its lowest point in his entire presidency. As a result, statistician and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver suggested that Biden dropping out of the race would be “more than fair” to consider as the incumbent president does not appear to be a viable candidate for the Democratic Party.
Based on an average of FiveThirtyEight’s polls, Biden’s approval rating dipped to an all-time low of 37.6%. Silver weighed in on Biden’s downward trend in the metric, stating that it would be worthwhile for Democrats to consider other options for the presidency.
Silver said in a lengthy thread, “But there’s some threshold below which continuing to run is a bigger risk. Are we there yet? I don’t know. But it’s more than fair to ask.” The founder of the polling analysis website listed several challenging circumstances that posed an obstacle to Biden’s campaign.
He continued, “If I’d told you 10 years ago a president would seek re-election at 81 despite a supermajority of Americans having concerns about his age, and then we’d hit 8% inflation for 2 years, you wouldn’t be surprised he was an underdog for reelection. You’d be surprised it was even close!” Silver wrote.
Amid Silver’s comments, those in the anti-Trump crowd criticized him for not commenting on whether Trump should drop out. The statistician hit back, questioning why that was a relevant comment considering the focus is on President Biden.
He said, “‘Trump should drop out too!’ is such a weird dunk on people who are pointing out that Biden has big challenges,” Silver shot back. “Yes, Trump should drop out! I agree! Biden would lose by 7 points, but I agree, the Republican Party and the country would be better served by a different nominee.”
“What’s clearer IMO is that Democrats would have been better served if Biden had decided a year ago not to seek a second term, which would have allowed them to have some semblance of a primary process and give voters a say among the many popular Democrats across the country,” he went on.
Silver further elaborated in his “Silver Bulletin” substack earlier this year that Biden’s “situation” has progressively worsened toward the tail end of his term, increasing Trump’s chances of winning. “If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have told you that Joe Biden was a reasonably clear favorite in the event of a rematch against Donald Trump.” He added, “Biden’s situation has become considerably worse.” Silver also wrote, “If he were 10 years younger, he might still be a 65/35 favorite. But if his campaign is substantially encumbered by his age, he’s probably the underdog.”
The FiveThirtyEight founder emphasized, “But even the most optimistic Democrats, if you read between the lines, are really arguing that Democrats could win despite Biden and not because of him. Biden is probably a below-replacement-level candidate at this point because Americans have a lot of extremely rational concerns about the prospect of a Commander-in-Chief who would be 86 years old by the end of his second term.”
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