Donald Trump left the White House with the lowest presidential approval rating in nearly 30 years, a recent record beaten only by the even more extreme unpopularity of his successor. Although Joe Biden‘s disapproval rating has only expanded throughout his tenure to a net -18 points underwater, Trump actually has recovered. Despite the liberal legal movement coordinating four separate criminal trials against the former president as well as a civil suit against his business and defamation suit regarding a rape allegation he vehemently denies, Teflon Don has rebounded from his nearly net -20 point nadir in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riots back to a mere net -10.
In other words, neither the former president nor the incumbent is popular. Fewer than half of all voters approve of Trump, and barely two in five approve of Biden. A full fifth of the electorate despises both men gunning for a second term in the presidency.
But this category of “double haters,” the voters that dislike both major parties’ presidential nominees, has proved a bellwether over the past decade. Crucially for Trump, the double haters have decided that however much they dislike him personally, they clearly despise Biden’s America even more.
Morning Consult and Marquette estimate “double haters” comprise 19% of the electorate, while Monmouth pegs the figure at 17%. The double haters of 2024 are disproportionately younger than 35 and Latino. While they’re far more likely than the rest of the electorate to back the independent bid of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the data indicate that’s not because of his anti-vaxxer activism, which actually softens his support among double haters. Rather, double haters seem to be former Biden backers who are crucially abandoning him in favor of anything else.
According to the latest NPR/Marist poll of the national electorate, Biden earns just 18% of the double hater voter, while Trump wins 34% and Kennedy another 22%. For Republicans, that’s an improvement from the 26% of double haters who told Monmouth last month they would likely back Biden and 19% who would back Trump.
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Double haters composed nearly the same share of the electorate in 2016 as they do today, and Trump beat Hillary Clinton with these voters by 17 points. Double haters shrunk to just 3% of the electorate in 2020, but Biden won them by 15 points.
Like 2020, a 2024 victory for Democrats requires putting even more reliance on voter turnout, but the departure of the double haters confirms what Trump’s swing state dominance has indicated for weeks: The cohort of voter turnout that secured Biden’s first turn is bowing out, either siphoning off votes to fringe spoilers like Kennedy or Cornel West as a protest vote, sitting out the election entirely, or worst of all for Biden, outright voting for Trump. The double haters may hate everyone, but unfortunately for Biden, they seem to hate the incumbent the most.