For the first time in his presidency, a majority of California voters disapprove of President Biden’s performance as support for him has fallen sharply among large Democratic-leaning groups, a new poll shows.

According to the latest UC Berkeley Institute of

for

Governmental Studies Survey, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. Biden’s disapproval has increased 6

percentage.percentage

points, and approval is down 4 points since May, the last time the poll asked this question.

The drop comes heavily from Biden’s fellow Democrats and, to a lesser extent, the state’s nonpartisan voters. Nearly all of the state’s Republican voters have already disapproved of him.

No single issue seems to fully explain the change: Biden gets poor ratings on several key issues, including inflation, the Israel-Hamas war and immigration.

However, specific issues may be the wrong place to look for an explanation: many voters do not follow news events closely, but respond to a general picture of how their lives are going.

In 2020, Biden accused then-President Trump of promoting chaos and promising a return to normal life. Instead, amid inflation and two major wars, the world still feels chaotic. Biden is now the sitting president and many voters are skeptical that he can come to grips with events at the age of 80. A previous Berkeley IGS

Los Angeles

A Times poll conducted in late August found that nearly half of the state’s voters and three in 10 Democrats were “very concerned” about Biden’s age.

The new poll shows that 1 in 4

one in four

voters who said they voted for Biden in 2020 now give him a negative job approval rating, up from about 1 in 6

one in six

in May.

Female voters and voters under 40 years old,

both

two groups that played a major role in Biden’s victory have gone from majority approval of Biden’s job performance in May to disapproval now. Latino voters, who were even split on Biden in May, now disapprove of his job by 14 points, 55% to 41%.

The decline in approval among young voters could be especially dangerous for Biden, said Mark DiCamillo, the director of the Berkeley IGS poll.

In 2020, more young voters turned out than expected and that was one of the main reasons why Biden was able to beat Trump,” DiCamillo said. That kind of high youth turnout “doesn’t seem like it’s playing a role at this point.”

‘Job evaluations get worse as you get younger’

DiCamillo said.

Paloma Polacci, a 19-year-old student at Santa Barbara City College, is an example.

She was too young to vote in 2020, but

After the Obama administration, everyone was a little nerdy about having Biden back in,” she said in an interview

Monday

.

“But I’m not sure I’m satisfied with his presidency,” she added. I was optimistic at the beginning of his presidency.” Now, not so much.

Such feelings are common in heavily Democratic California

not bad

likely to change the outcome Biden continues to lead Trump by a sizable margin in hypothetical matchups in 2024, the UC Berkeley-Times poll shows.

And Polacci noted that she would ultimately “vote the lesser of two evils.” It’s annoying that that’s American politics now.

But the trend of younger voters, women and Latinos resenting the president is also emerging in swing states where the battle is much closer. In some recent polls, Biden now trails Trump in hypothetical 2024 contests.

Even in California, Biden’s 15-point lead in the poll would be just half of his margin of victory from three years ago.

A lackluster showing at the top of the ticket could hurt Democrats further down the ballot. Five California Republicans hold seats in Congress

Congress of

districts that Biden carried in 2020, one in Los Angeles County, two in Orange County and two in the Central Valley. Flipping those districts is a key part of Democrats’ strategy to regain a majority in the House of Representatives, but that would require strong Democratic turnout.

Importantly, Biden’s margin is smaller, not because his voters have switched to Trump, only a few of them have, but because a quarter of them say they would not support either candidate or perhaps not vote at all if the 2024 election were to happen become.

“They’re not going to Trump, they’re going to neither or undecided,” DiCamillo said. “It’s almost like they don’t know where to go.”

Of course, the election is still a year away, and history shows that polls cannot predict outcomes that far in advance; their value lies in describing what voters are currently feeling.

Both of Biden’s Democratic predecessors, Presidents Clinton and Obama, suffered sharp declines in approval during their third years in office, including sharp declines among their fellow Democrats. Obama’s national job approval at the time was similar to Biden’s now.

Both Clinton and Obama turned their problems around and were re-elected. Biden’s aides say he could do the same once the campaign is actively underway.

“Democratic base votes tend to consolidate late,” John Anzalone, who led Biden’s polls in 2020, said Tuesday during a panel discussion for pollsters.

The key for Democrats is to get voters to focus on the choice between Biden and the Republican candidate.

That almost certainly seems to be Trump. In California, as in the rest of the country, he has a huge lead over his rivals for the nomination.

The new poll shows that 57% of voters likely to participate in California’s Republican primary in March now say they support Trump, giving him a wide lead over Florida’s governor. Ron DeSantis, 12%, and former governor of South Carolina. Nikki Haley, 9%, who is roughly tied for second place. Nearly four in 10 likely Republican voters backed DeSantis in February; he has lost ground in every poll since.

Winning more than 50% of the primary votes would give Trump all of the state’s delegates to the Republican convention next year. California has the largest delegation of any state.

The prospect of a rematch bothers many voters.

Jeff Wapner, a nonpartisan voter, interviewed

Wednesday

in Santa Barbara, liked it

both

Biden and Trump, 77, to

the age of

his parents, who are in their late seventies.

They are great people and I love them, says Wapner (46). They shouldn’t rule the country.

It’s really depressing that we don’t have better options, he said.

For Biden, reversing his fortunes will require improvements among several groups that played a big role in his 2020 victory.

Two-thirds of California voters under 50 say they supported Biden in 2020, the poll found; only 43% say they would vote for him today. The decline is even greater among Latino voters, from 66% then to 38% now. Biden has suffered a slightly smaller, but still significant, erosion of support among Black voters, from 74% in 2020 to 60% now.

In each of these cases, the poll found that support for Trump had not increased significantly. Instead, large portions of each group said they remained undecided, would vote for someone else or might not vote.

Discontent with Biden within his party covered a wide range of issues.

In recent weeks, for example, Biden has come under attack from some in the party’s left wing for his strong support for Israel in its war against Hamas. The poll shows that: Among Biden’s 2020 voters, 47% approve of his handling of the Israel-Hamas battle, compared to 43% who disapprove.

Among Biden voters who identify as strongly liberal, 52% disapprove.

That’s noticeably less support than Biden receives from fellow Democrats on two other foreign policy issues: the war in Ukraine, where two-thirds of Democrats approve of his work, or relations with China, where nearly six in 10 Democrats agree.

But there are other issues at play: Democrats judge Biden equally harshly on immigration and only slightly better on crime and inflation. And while Biden’s Israeli stance may have alienated some strongly liberal voters, overall, that group was no less likely to support Biden than voters who identified themselves as only somewhat liberal.

Biden’s campaign so far has placed great emphasis on improving his view of the economy. His aides are frustrated that, amid near-record low unemployment, rising wages and strong economic growth, a large majority of Americans still rate the economy as poor.

One issue that appears less concerning for Biden is the likely presence of independent candidates on the ballot. The poll tested a Biden-Trump contest two ways, head-to-head and in a four-way matchup, with independent candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and

Cornel

West.

Biden’s margin over Trump was virtually identical either way: 46%-31% in the two-way test and 43%-29% in the four-way test.

Kennedy, a former Democrat who has espoused anti-vaccination beliefs and other conspiracy theories, received 9% in the hypothetical matchup and received nearly equal support from former Biden and Trump voters. West, a professor and left-wing activist, drew 4%, mostly from former Biden voters or people who didn’t vote in 2020.

Historically, support for third-party candidates has almost always declined as a campaign has progressed.

The Berkeley IGS poll surveyed 6,342 California registered voters, including a weighted subsample of 4,506 likely voters and 1,234 Republican likely voters. The survey was conducted online in English and Spanish on October 1. 24-30. The results are weighted to match census and voter registration benchmarks, so margin of error estimates may be inaccurate; however, the results for the full sample have an estimated margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction. The estimated margin of error for the likely voter subsample is 2.5 points and for Republican voters is 4 points.

Times staff writer Faith E. Pinho in Santa Barbara contributed to this report.