The Approval Rating Mirage
The New York Times, like many legacy outlets, often focuses on presidential approval ratings as a key indicator for upcoming midterm elections, debating endlessly whether a slight bump or dip for figures like Donald Trump will sway the public on Election Day. This narrative implies that public sentiment towards a single figure is the primary, if not sole, determinant of legislative control,
suggesting a simple cause-and-effect that simplifies complex political machinery down to a popularity contest. Yet, a glance back at the 1994 midterms, when the Democratic party lost control of Congress despite a relatively popular Bill Clinton, or the 2010 elections, which saw a Republican surge while Barack Obama’s approval was still respectable at 45% (according to Gallup), tells a different
story. The consistent factor has rarely been the individual in the White House, but rather the immense, often invisible, flow of corporate PAC money, campaign finance deregulation since Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, and structural gerrymandering that locks in partisan advantages long before any vote is cast. In 2022, for instance, corporate lobbying spent over $4 billion, a figure dwarfing any
individual candidate’s campaign efforts, yet this financial leverage rarely makes the front page. What the mainstream narrative deliberately omits is the almost universal correlation between campaign spending power and electoral success, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office. It’s a double standard: the American political system is presented as a vibrant democracy responding to public mood,