2024 won't be about candidates, it'll be about ideology

In the lead-up to the 2022 midterm, political analysts continually cited President Joe Biden's relatively low polling numbers as a reason the vaunted red wave would sweep the nation. Instead, Democrats broke free from historical norms, growing their majority in Senate and holding House Republicans to a razor-thin majority.

Now that President Biden's reelection is officially underway, his lowish polling is already drawing 'grim' assessments. But even Politico is somewhat tempering its analysis with the acknowledgment that Biden's potential rival is Trump, "whose personal favorability ratings are generally worse than Biden’s." True story.

So as we prepare for a gusher of polling-obsessed doomsday predictions for Biden, keep in mind that we are living in ahistorical times. A lifetime exists between now and November '24, and now more than ever, the presidential election isn't merely a contest of candidates; it's a contest of parties. And the Republican Party, rife with infighting, is fundamentally an anti-democratic force now. It's no accident that the very first word out of Biden's mouth in the video launching his reelection bid is "freedom."

Polling analysis largely ignores the factors above, but it's still worth setting a baseline right now. In FiveThirtyEight's aggregate, Biden's job approval rests at about 42.1% (nearly a point higher than his 41.4% on midterm Election Day). As Politico points out, Biden's approval rating is roughly equivalent to where Barack Obama (43%) and Ronald Reagan (41%) stood when they won reelection. But it's also similar to Donald Trump (42%) and Jimmy Carter (40%), who lost their second-term bids.