In August 2021, President Biden hit an inflection point, shifting from net positive to net negative in his approval rating — and he has never recovered. Ominously, he passed what looks to be another inflection point in November, definitively falling behind Donald Trump in the ballot test. And he might not recover from that either.

Despite the noise, the battle for the presidency in 2024 has followed a fairly simple incumbent-challenger dynamic, if impeded somewhat by Trump’s unpopularity. The sitting president started out with a strong inaugural “honeymoon” polling bounce, which degraded over time as challenges to the president naturally created division and disappointment.

That said, this is not a typical race, with a former president with more than 90 criminal charges running and an incumbent president whose polling has had an almost unbroken collapse, with little sign of any improvement. The approval and ballot test polling have been fairly stable — the politics may be roiling, but the voters are moving at a glacial pace.

First inflection: Positive to negative approval

Biden’s job approval hit a high of 55.2 percent favorable on April 9, 2021. The botched Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster for his rating; soon after, he fell to net negative approval. By July 2022, Biden hit a low point, at 57.5 percent negative with a net negative over 20 points. The incompetent Republican midterm election campaign, terrible Trump-backed candidates and an historic overperformance for Democrats boosted Biden to a mere 6-point net negative in February 2023.

But it’s been downhill ever since, just not quite the same erosion as happened from summer 2021 to summer 2022. Biden has skidded to a 15-point net deficit with 55.5 percent........

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