President-elect Joe Biden receives huge post-election favorability boost

The former Vice President currently has a net favorability of +16, more than 2.5 times the +6 favorability rating he had heading into the November election against President Donald Trump. At the time, Trump had a net favorability of -13. 

Historically, incoming Presidents tend to receive an approval bounce at the beginning of their first term in office and watch it slowly decline over the next four or eight years, with a quick bounce up or down based on events or actions they take. 

Since 2000, the winning presidential candidate has seen his approval rating increase post-election, and every President with the exception of Donald Trump reached the majority level of favorability upon winning. But typically, the numbers only grow by a few points; the growth is tempered. Biden’s increase is atypical. 

Numbers aren’t always as high leading into an election either. In November of 2016, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was net -12.6, and Trump was net -21.

A Gallup poll put Biden’s approval rating at 55%, the highest it has been since February 2019, which was two months before he declared his candidacy for President. Biden’s sudden jump may have been propelled by negative reactions to Trump’s inability to accept the results of the presidential election. The President refuses to concede the election and has taken legal action in a number of states to challenge voting results. Nearly all of those challenges have been unsuccessful in the courts. Many battleground states have begun the process of certifying their election counts. 

Biden’s favorability is largely bolstered by women, the Fortune-SurveyMonkey poll found. The President-elect is +28 with women and +0 with men. Favorability fell neatly along party lines with the majority of Democrats approving of the President-elect and the majority of Republicans rating him unfavorably. Independent votes, however, overwhelmingly viewed Biden in a positive light. 

While the majority of age groups hovered between 56% and 59% favorability ratings for Biden, just 51% of Generation X, those between the ages of 40 and 55, gave Biden the nod of approval.

Fortune-SurveyMonkey polled 2,247 U.S. adults between Nov. 30 and Dec 1. The margin of error is 3 percentage points.

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