Joe Biden's approval rating never had a spike.
Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Read this as a claim about Biden's presidential approval from January 2021 to May 2022, especially in response to events such as the Ukraine invasion. True: approval averages (FiveThirtyEight, RealClearPolitics, Gallup) show no notable short-term rise, meaning no increase of more than about 2–3 points sustained over weeks, including after the February 2022 Russian invasion and the State of the Union. Mostly true: there was a minor, brief uptick of about 1–2 points. Mixed: there was a modest rise of about 3 points that some analysts called a bump. Mostly false: there was a clear rally of several points that was short-lived. False: averages show a large, distinct spike.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 Home of the Marist Poll | Polls, Analysis, Learning, and More Marist Institute for Public Opinion (Marist Poll) · 31 March 2022
“President Joe Biden’s post-State of the Union job approval rating bounce has come back down. 39% of Americans approve of the job President Biden is doing in office, down from 47% immediately following his address.”
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E2 What We Know About American Public Opinion and Ukraine Gallup · 18 March 2022
“But indications from a number of polls to date show little evidence of a significant bump in Biden's overall approval rating. Pew Research, for example, pegs Biden's rating at 43%, essentially the same as the 41% measured in January.”
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E3 A loose consensus on Ukraine Ipsos · 4 March 2022
“However, this hasn’t translated to a bump in his overall approval ratings, which also remain flat at 43%.”
Reasoning
Gallup's review of several polls in March 2022 found "little evidence of a significant bump" in Biden's approval after the Ukraine invasion, citing Pew at 43% against 41% in January (E2). Ipsos found that his approval stayed flat at 43% (E3). Marist recorded a short post-State of the Union "bounce" to 47%, which had fallen back to 39% by late March (E1). That was a single poll, though, not an average. Taken together, the poll summaries show no significant bump [E2][E3], while one poll (Marist) showed a short-lived bounce from 47% back down to 39% [E1]; the judges placed this in the criteria's "mostly true" band. None of the evidence quotes the polling averages themselves, so this verdict rests on the poll summaries.
Cite this claim
Nate Silver, “Joe Biden's approval rating never had a spike.” (said 21 May 2022). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_813048ea162c, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_813048ea162c
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Nate Silver
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Resolved true
“It’s not hard, for instance, to find polls from this point in 2015 showing Hillary Clinton with double-digit leads over Trump.”
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Resolved true
“This is the pollster that had shown a big bounce for Garcia before, so either that previous poll was an outlier or her momentum has been usurped by Wiley.”
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Mixed
“Instead, there was a modest polling error, well in line with historical polling errors, but even a modest error was enough to provide for plenty of paths to victory for Trump.”
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Mostly true
“The single most important reason that our model gave Trump a better chance than others is because of our assumption that polling errors are correlated.”
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Mostly true
“Clinton collapsed in the Midwest, destroying her Electoral College chances”
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