Trust in Biden Is on the Decline, Hampering His Sale of a Growing Economy

Democrats have been bewildered by the disconnect between surging economic numbers and polls showing voters are skeptical of how President Joe Biden has managed the economy.

One underexplored reason: Trust.

Over the last two years, Biden’s once-high trustworthiness rating has consistently slipped. A CNN survey in April 2021 found that 54% of voters found Biden was “honest and trustworthy,” a figure that fell to 48% in October 2022 and then to 45% in March 2023. 

A similar trend has become clear in other polls: Where Biden’s trustworthiness was at 48% among Americans in a May 2020 Washington Post/ABC News survey, it was at 41% in May 2023. And a YouGov tracking survey found that over 50% of voters found Biden trustworthy near the start of his administration in March 2020, but that number has now fallen to 37%.

Democrats correctly note that trust in all institutions – from the military to Congress to the Supreme Court – has plummeted in recent years. But the downturn for Biden, given he had once been one of the unique politicians with high trustworthiness numbers, may explain why voters are not yet buying his attempt to sell his economic success.

“It’s a really important variable here,” said Celinda Lake, one of Biden’s pollsters in 2020. A lack of trust “makes it very hard for anybody to sell anything and I think you have to rebuild trust, you can’t just sell it. Part of trust is making a promise and keeping it. And I think that is the stage the president is in right now, where people are pretty clear about what they were promised, but they are less clear about what has been delivered.”

Lake added: “Trust is essential to getting credit, it is essential to buying the message about the future and it is essential to affection on just a basic, human psychological level.”

Biden’s inability to receive credit from voters – from a 12-month decline in inflation to high consumer confidence to the economy growing by 2.4% in the second quarter of 2023 – hasn’t concerned Democrats yet. Most believe that polls on the issue are lagging indicators that will soon catch up to economic reality. But should this trend continue, Democrats will begin to worry because Biden’s reelection is expected to hinge on how voters view his ability to manage the economy.

“There’s still a disconnect with how the economy is doing and how people are feeling and when that changes, it gets easier,” said veteran Democratic strategist Jim Manley. “The more positive news that is out there, the better off they’ll be.”

Trump's trust numbers are even lower

Part of the Democratic ease comes from Biden’s most salient political theory: “Don't compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative.” Some Republicans have worse trust numbers than the president, a group that most notably includes the 2024 GOP frontrunner, former President Donald Trump. 

The YouGov tracking of Trump’s honesty finds a far more stable, but abysmal, figure for the former president. Over half of American voters viewed Trump as untrustworthy for the entirety of his administration, peaking at 57% around the election in 2020. A Washington Post/ABC News poll released in May 2023 found that 33% of Americans said Trump was honest and trustworthy, while 64% said he was not.

In a statement on Biden’s economic message, campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo noted that any economic populism from the Republicans running for President “has zero credibility,” an attempt to undercut their own trustworthiness, given “all of them campaign on returning to the failed trickle-down playbook that screwed over American workers for decades.”

Democratic strategist Rodell Mollineau said, “Trust comes with familiarity,” so when Biden starts to hit the campaign trail, “people are going to remember why they liked him in the first place.”

“It’s a comparison,” Mollineau added. “Do you trust Biden or Donald Trump who lies at every breath?”

Even still, polls have recently shown more voters trust Trump on the economy. National exit polls from the 2020 election showed that voters were split 49%-49% over whether Biden or Trump would better handle the economy. But an ABC News/Washington Post poll released in May revealed that 54% of those surveyed say Trump did a “better job” of handling the economy as president. The same survey showed that 36% said Biden has done a better job on economic issues.

Susan Del Perico, the longtime Republican strategist who supported Biden in 2020, said the president needs to talk in detail about the successes his administration is having to alleviate some of the feelings of distrust. 

“The thing about kitchen-table issues is people don’t need to be reminded of it too much because they pay their bills, they know what that looks like,” Del Percio said.

“What he has to do is continue to press on the issues that are being done,” she added. “People need to feel like inflation is coming down. He has to show what’s being done and continue to do so. On inflation, talk about the projects that are being worked on right now.”