On Election Eve, Majority Of Voters Deeply Dissatisfied With Biden-Harris Years: TIPP Tracking Poll Terry Jones
As most know, reading the tea leaves about who will win an election by looking only at political preference polls can be difficult. Polls jump around, and people often don’t want others to know who they will vote for. But there is a way around that: Ask people how they feel about their own lives. The TIPP Tracking Poll did just that, asking voters how they’re doing under the Biden-Harris administration. Not well, it turns out.
In a national online survey taken from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, the TIPP Tracking Poll asked a series of four questions to 1,603 registered voters, with a margin of error of +/-2.5 percentage points. The responses suggest a majority of Americans harbor deep disappointments over the path the nation has traveled since the outbreak of COVID.
But it’s a split majority: Registered Democrats continue to express positive feelings about both the Biden-Harris administration and the general direction of the country. Republicans and independent/third-party voters remain mostly dissatisfied.
The first question asked simply: “Are you better off now compared to your situation pre-COVID?”
A majority of 54% said “no,” while 36% answered “yes.” Another 10% responded “not sure.”
But a closer look reveals two very different views, based on party affiliation. Among Democrats, 56% said they were better off now than before COVID, while only 34% felt they were worse off, with 10% not sure.
They inhabit a different mental universe than those in the other two major political groupings. For Republicans, 69% said they were worse off, versus 23% saying they were better off and 8% not sure. Independents weren’t far behind at 62% “worse,” 27% “better” and 11% unsure.
With apologies to Charles Dickens, it’s “A Tale Of Two Americas.”
Digging further in, TIPP asked voters: “In general, how SATISFIED are you with the direction the country is going in at this time?”
Once again, overall the numbers are dismal, with just 34% saying they were either “very satisfied” (12%) or “somewhat satisfied” (22%). But a hefty 63% reported being either “not very” satisfied (24%) or “not at all” satisfied (38%).
And yes, again, the political schism seen now daily across the nation and in the legacy media was once again visible in the data. Of Democrats, 61% said they were satisfied, compared to only 34% responding they were not satisfied.
That’s the polar opposite of Republicans (14% satisfied, 85% dissatisfied) and independents/third-party voters (26% satisfied, 70% dissatisfied.)
The poll now opens up to ask voters to assess, in general terms, how former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden and his vice president and current presidential candidate Kamala Harris have performed.
Specifically, TIPP asked first: “Are Biden and Harris’s policies helping or hurting your family?” and, second, “Did Trump’s policies help or hurt your family?”
On the first question, among all respondents, only 34% said that the Biden-Harris administration’s actions over the past nearly four years were “helping,” while a slender majority of 50% said they were “hurting.” Another 16% said they were “not sure.”
Yet once more, Democrats were out of step with the majority, as 73% said the Biden-Harris years were helping their families, compared to only 11% claiming to be hurting and 17% unsure.
The results make a 180-degree turn when the Republicans and indie voters were asked that question. A huge 86% majority of Republicans said the Biden-Harris policies were hurting their families, against just 5% who reported that those same policies were helping. Meanwhile, a 53% majority of indie voters were hurt, a 2-to-1 majority over the 25% who said they were being helped by the Biden-Harris policy matrix.
Last came basically the same question asked about Trump.
This time, a 48% plurality overall told the TIPP Tracking Poll that they had been helped by Trump’s policies in place from 2017 to early 2021, while only 37% said their families had been hurt. But the “hurt” response among Dems totaled 72%, while “help” got just 14%.
In comparison, a 44% plurality of independents reported being helped, about a quarter higher than the 35% responding their families were hurt by Trump policies. And again, GOP voters gave Trump high marks, with 86% saying they were helped, over only 5% claiming they were hurt.
The question is, how can the same people often living in the same communities come up with such entirely different views of what’s taken place over the past eight years?
Is it the relentlessly negative drumbeat of news items from a biased, left-leaning Big Media complex? That’s one possibility.
The conservative Media Research Center found in a recent survey of Big Three television news coverage that “The leftist media 2024 election coverage has been the most unfair in history with Donald Trump getting 85% negative coverage and Kamala Harris getting 78% positive coverage.”
This comports with longstanding complaints among center and right-of-center people of pervasive media bias.
In a recent video released on his X channel, former ABC News and Fox News correspondent John Stossel, a self-described libertarian (not a Republican), harshly criticized the big corporate media for their open anti-Trump, pro-Harris bias.
In introducing the video, which contained many examples, Stossel noted how “reporters suck up to Kamala Harris. ‘I am struck, just in your presence!’ one told her. Interviewing Republicans, the tone is very different.”
The recent flap over Biden calling Trump supporters “garbage” is a case in point. It came after a comedian warmup act at a Trump rally crudely called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” apparently a reference to the island’s recent trash crisis.
But Biden’s response was personal and aimed squarely at anyone, anywhere who supported Trump. The full quote: “The only garbage I see floating out there is his (Trump’s) supporters.”
Unfortunately, the so-called mainstream media went into full-on defensive mode for Biden, claiming he didn’t say what he clearly said, and helpfully adding an apostrophe between the “r” and the “s” in “supporters,” to make it say something entirely different.
Why the big deal? Because Trump supporters and others already have problems with the media misrepresenting them in particular and working-class Americans in general.
It’s class warfare. And part of that is telling people what to think, through pervasive media messaging and outright censorship of dissenting beliefs.
America’s university-educated elites, including the media, share little in common with those on the bottom rungs of the social and economic ladder. Increasingly, those elites have resorted to simply shutting up people who disagree with them, as this study shows.
Pick an active dispute in our society, whether it’s K-12 education, crime, inflation, abortion, religion, climate change, race, you name it. The pressure to conform to ideologically driven beliefs, pushed from above, has all the makings of a class war by the elites against the rest of us.
Americans are tired of that, as the TIPP Tracking Poll data show. The fact that Donald Trump remains viable as a presidential candidate after eight years of non-stop vituperation and at least two assassination attempts shows that average Americans are catching on to what’s happening.
I&I/TIPP publishes timely, unique, and informative data each month on topics of public interest. TIPP’s reputation for polling excellence comes from being the most accurate pollster for the past five presidential elections.
Terry Jones is an editor of Issues & Insights. His four decades of journalism experience include serving as national issues editor, economics editor, and editorial page editor for Investor’s Business Daily.
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