Byron York’s Daily Memo: Under Biden, a dramatic change in the polls
UNDER BIDEN, A DRAMATIC CHANGE IN THE POLLS. It’s the most commonly-asked question in political polling: In general, would you say things in the country are headed in the right direction, or do you think they’re on the wrong track? Americans in recent years have mostly said things were on the wrong track, to varying degrees.
They still do, but the numbers are changing pretty dramatically. RealClearPolitics keeps an average of polls on the right track-wrong track question, and on January 18, it showed that 70.2 percent of Americans said the country was on the wrong track, versus 20.7 percent who said it was on the right track — a different of 49.5 percentage points.
Now, that 49.5 point difference has shrunk to a mere 8.2 points — a huge drop. In the latest RCP average, 51.5 percent of those polled said things are on the wrong track, while 43.3 percent said things are on the right track. The 8.2-point difference is the smallest in more than a decade.