The polling firm Morning Consult surveyed citizens of the world’s major democracies in late November and early December, and the results, even allowing for exceptional margins of error, show that Biden is anything but alone.

Think Biden’s Unpopular? Check Out His Fellow Leaders.

If floundering leaders and ineffectual democracies are the new norm, we’re in a very dangerous time.

by Harold Meyerson

 

December 23, 2024

Ben Curtis/AP Photo

From left, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, President Joe Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, and President Emmanuel Macron of France pose for a photo as they meet at the Chancellery in Berlin, October 18, 2024.

. . .Morning Consult had Biden with a 37 percent approval rating, against a 55 percent disapproval rating. 

That dismal approval number, however, was roughly twice the size of the leaders of France and Germany, and higher than those of all the leaders of the G7 nations save Italy, with whom he was effectively tied. 

Here, in descending order of approval, are the numbers:

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni: 38 percent approval to 55 percent disapprovalAmerica’s Biden: 37 to 55The U.K.’s Keir Starmer: 30 to 59Canada’s Justin Trudeau: 26 to 68Japan’s Shigeru Ishiba: 24 to 53Germany’s Olaf Scholz: 19 to 75France’s Emmanuel Macron: 18 to 75Most leaders of major democracies that aren’t members of the G7 also came in with a negative balance. 

1. Spain’s Pedro Sanchez put up a 32 percent approval rating to 63 percent disapproval; 
2. Brazil’s Lula (before his emergency surgery) was at 42/53, and 
3. Poland’s Donald Tusk almost broke even, 44/45. 

It’s important to note the vast ideological spectrum of these leaders, ranging from the democratic socialism of Sanchez and Lula to the right populism of Meloni.

By contrast, 

1. Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum, who is continuing the very popular left-populism of her mentor and presidential predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has an approval rating of 64 percent to a disapproval rating of 28 percent. 
2. Argentina’s Javier Milei, who mixes the ideology of Ayn Rand with the authoritarian swagger of Elon Musk, comes in at 66/29, though a December Gallup poll puts his approval rating significantly lower, at 48 percent. 

As over half the Argentinean public, by the government’s own measures, lives in poverty, and more than a quarter in “extreme poverty,” it’s likely that polling the poorer half of Argentineans is difficult.
That same prevalence of poverty may have led Morning Consult to overrate the popularity of India’s Narendra Modi, whose approval rating sits at 76 percent, though India’s recent parliamentary elections registered a significant drop in support for Modi’s party. 

Indeed, it’s notable that Morning Consult’s positive findings were achieved in nations with significantly higher rates of poverty and extreme poverty—and thereby higher rates of difficulty in reaching sub-middle-class residents—than the nations whose leaders placed lower on the approval scale.

What is beyond dispute is that the leaders in nations with what we call advanced economies, where it’s easier to reach a genuine cross section of the public, all bombed. That’s as true for elections as it is for approval ratings. 

As former Biden aide Bharat Ramamurti pointed out last week, every incumbent party in a developed nation facing re-election in 2024 lost, and Biden’s party actually fared the best among them all, losing the presidency by only 1.5 points in the popular vote and gaining seats in the House of Representatives.

In none of these developed nations are the economies performing to the public’s satisfaction, notwithstanding Biden’s significant achievement in the U.S., with the highest cumulative GDP growth since the pandemic. In most of these nations, immigration is also a source of considerable dissatisfaction, but it’s chiefly economic conditions, and the ineffectualness of governments in bettering them, that are bringing their leaders down. . .

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