Naomi Lim of the Washington Examiner documents bad polling news for President Biden.
From parental rights regarding school curricula to COVID-19 vaccine authorization delays for children younger than 5, President Joe Biden and Democrats are frustrating suburban mothers.
But while the influence of the famed “soccer” and “security moms” was tested in previous election cycles, suburban women are still a crucial demographic if Biden and his party hope to cling to any congressional power after the 2022 midterm contests.
Siding with mothers is widely considered to be a winning campaign strategy, according to political analyst Bertram Johnson.
There’s a reason that ‘motherhood and apple pie’ is a cliche, and that’s because Americans find both to be wholesome and appealing,” he said. “It could be risky for a candidate to be framed as not supportive enough of this group.”
It is not necessarily mothers per se, Marist poll director Barbara Carvalho clarified. A mother’s self-identification as a Democrat or Republican is powerful, Carvalho told the Washington Examiner.
“But there is a group of women we see in polling, suburban women with some college or college degrees, who are also more likely to be moms that are a group more up for grabs,” she said.
Biden resonated with suburban women and mothers in 2020, according to Carvalho. And issues concerning social tolerance and abortion access, with some restrictions, move them closer to the Democrats, she said.
“But other issues, such as public school choice, parent involvement in schools, and, even more importantly, inflation and the economy, have them leaning Republican,” she added. …
… But Carvalho’s own Marist poll, published in February with NPR and PBS Newshour, found that only 38% of suburban respondents approved of Biden’s job performance as president, down 11 percentage points from December. Biden’s popularity among suburban women specifically dropped by double digits in the same two-month period, plummeting from 57% to 45%.