Not yet
Kevin Drum has an interesting observation:
How is Joe Biden doing these days? Courtesy of CNN, here are his approval ratings from a variety of national polls over the past few months:
From August through October Biden’s approval dropped about 1.5% per month. Since the Israel-Gaza war broke out a month ago, his approval has improved by about half a percent.
I’d like to generate a chart like this just for young Democrats, but I can’t find the data to do it. My suspicion is that Biden has been hemorrhaging approval from young voters for a long time and the Israel-Gaza war hasn’t really had a big effect. But I don’t know that.
In any case, even if it has had an effect, it’s apparently been counterbalanced by increased approval from older voters. Taken as a whole, the war has rather surprisingly had only a very small effect on Biden’s approval, and probably a positive one.
POSTSCRIPT: The change is even more dramatic if you draw two separate trend lines for the before and after periods:
I think there are probably quite a few people like me who are appalled by what is happening in Gaza but think that Biden is doing the best he can to keep the whole thing from hurtling out of control while trying to rein in Netanyahu, for whom he has no love. US control of the situation is limited to “influence” over Israel which is less powerful than a lot of people think. But the global ramifications of this going sideways regionally are profound.
I do think the protests in the US and Europe have an effect on this however, by showing the Israeli government that there is serious objection to the overkill in Gaza and it gives the US and allies some leverage. Not that I’m sanguine Netanyahu gives a damn. He knows the whole world is worried that this thing is going to explode the region so perversely he’s being even more reckless than usual in order to keep the US and its allies closer than they want to be. It’s a mess.
As for the polling, I don’t know what to make of it. It does appear that Biden is holding on to his pathetic approval rating regardless of what happens in Gaza. That’s about the best we can hope for at this moment. I’m hoping things settle down soon.