Vote studies 2024: Biden support steadies in final year in office

WASHINGTON — Joe Biden may have lost the support of congressional Democrats for his reelection effort last year, but he maintained support for his priorities, including making gains among Republicans in both chambers, during his final year in the White House.

On votes on which Biden took a position, the Senate Democratic majority stuck with the president on 95% of them, while House Democrats did so on 88% of the votes, according to CQ Roll Call’s annual vote studies. The House figure, however, marked the lowest score for the president of his four years in office.

Biden made up for that drop in intraparty support by seeing the House Republican majority back his position on nearly 1 in 5 votes – going from 5% support in 2023 to 19% last year. Senate Republicans went from backing him on 18% of votes in 2023 to 25% last year.

Most of the presidential support votes in the Senate were to confirm Biden’s nominees – 110 out of 133 votes. Despite Democrats holding only a narrow majority, the nominees were successfully advanced in all 110 instances. On these votes, Biden had, on average, the support of 96% of the Senate Democratic Caucus and 24% of Republicans.

When it came to votes on legislative matters, though, Biden’s support in the Senate wasn’t as steadfast. On the 23 non-nomination votes that the president weighed in on last year, Biden’s position won 16 times (69.6%).

Still, this success rate marked a recovery from his mark of 48.1% of non-nomination votes in 2023 — the lowest it had been for a president since Bill Clinton’s 39.1% in 2000 — and nearly back in line with the approximately 70% success rate in each of Biden’s first two years in office.

Five Democratic senators who participated in at least half of the 133 presidential position votes sided with Biden on every one they cast – New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, Illinois’ Tammy Duckworth, Delaware’s Chris Coons, New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen and Georgia’s Raphael Warnock. Heinrich was the only one of the five not to miss any of these votes.

Three of the four independent senators whom Democrats relied on for their governing majority were predictably the least reliable. Bernie Sanders of Vermont broke with Biden on 10.3% of the presidential support votes he cast, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema opposed the president’s position on 13.6% of such votes and West Virginia’s Joe Manchin III did so on 19.3%.

Among the votes Sanders took that deviated from Biden’s stance were those against bipartisan agreements, while Manchin and Sinema regularly supported Republican-led efforts to overturn Biden administration rulemaking through the Congressional Review Act.

Montana Democrat Jon Tester led the way among senators who faced the most challenging reelection contests in 2024 in deviating from the president’s position, but he did so only slightly more than 5% of the time. Ohio’s Sherrod Brown wasn’t far behind at 4.6%. Both senators lost their seats in November as Senate Republicans flipped the chamber.

As with any divided Congress, there were times when Biden supported measures that generated opposition from the left flank of the Democratic Caucus. In 2024, that happened enough that progressive stalwart Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts broke with the president slightly more than any of the Democrats facing hard-fought reelection campaigns.

Overall, Senate Democrats’ support score was right on trend, averaging support for Biden about 95% of the time. That’s the same figure as 2022 and 2023 and just a tick off the 97% mark achieved in the first year of Biden’s presidency.

On the Republican side, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were the most supportive of the president. They backed his position on about two-thirds of the votes he weighed in on as frequent supporters of his nominees and in their roles as senior members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

The only other Senate Republican to support Biden more than 50% of the time was South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, who is generally deferential on nominations. Graham voted with the president’s position 54% of the time last year.

Collins, Murkowski and Graham were the three most-supportive Republican senators of Biden’s stances in each of his four years in office.

The chamber’s most ardent opponents of Biden’s were Republicans Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Eric Schmitt of Missouri, both opposing the president’s position at least 90% of the time. Another 14 Republican senators voted against Biden on at least 80% of the presidential support votes they cast.

House support

Biden ended his presidency having to negotiate a hostile but often divided House Republican majority for a second straight year.

Of the 72 House votes on which Biden weighed in last year, his position was successful on 23 of them (31.9%).

Though a far cry from the 100% win-rate he had with a Democratic-led House in his first two years. But it marked a rebound from 2023’s 18.5%. It was also higher than the nine most recent years in which the House and presidency were controlled by opposite parties. (Trump, Barack Obama and Biden averaged a House success rate of 18.5% over those nine years).

Overall, House Republican opposition to Biden’s positions softened somewhat in 2024, down to 77% from 93% a year earlier.

The leading opposition to Biden within the House GOP majority came from Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, a former chairman of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. Perry voted against Biden on 93% of the votes on which the president had a clear position. All told there were 13 House Republicans who voted against the Biden position at least 90% of the time.

At the other end of the House Republican leaderboard is another Pennsylvanian, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who amassed a voting record that appears to befit someone representing a suburban Philadelphia district that backed Kamala Harris last fall.

Fitzpatrick voted with Biden 41.7% of the time, followed by the now-retired North Carolina Rep. Patrick T. McHenry at 30.6% and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise at 30%.

The votes on which Scalise found agreement with Biden included must-pass spending deals, as well as reauthorization bills such as those for the Federal Aviation Administration and provisions of foreign intelligence surveillance law.

On the Democratic side, four House lawmakers who voted regularly in 2024 backed Biden’s position 100% of the time: Alabama’s Terri A. Sewell, California’s Julia Brownley, now-retired Virginia Rep. Jennifer Wexton and New Jersey’s Bill Pascrell, who died in July.

Among the least supportive Democrats were several who faced tough reelection races last cycle. Six of them opposed Biden’s position at least 30% of the time, with Washington’s Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Maine’s Jared Golden leading the way at 49.3% and 47.8%, respectively.

They were followed by Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas (opposing Biden positions 44.4% of the time), Don Davis of North Carolina (43.1%), Vicente Gonzalez of Texas (38.6%) and Mary Peltola of Alaska (31.1%), who lost reelection in November.

The overall support level for Biden among House Democrats dipped to 88% last year, after exceeding 90% in each of his first three years, with 99% support in the two years that Democrats had the majority.

Methodology

Each year, CQ Roll Call assigns a presidential position to votes based on whether the president expressed a clear stance before members of Congress voted. Final Senate votes on nominations (a confirmation vote or an unsuccessful cloture vote), by virtue of being submitted by the president, are considered presidential support votes.

Determining a president’s position on roll-call votes pertaining to legislation can get more complicated.

Traditionally, the metric relied on formal statements of administration policy from the Office of Management and Budget or when there was some other clear answer from the White House about the president’s views.

As communications have evolved, however, vote positions have also been determined through other sources, such as social media posts and public statements.

For example, Biden’s position on legislation to force Chinese company ByteDance to sell its popular social media platform TikTok was gleaned through administration actions and his public remarks.

The White House didn’t formally release a statement on the topic. But in March 2023, a TikTok spokesperson lamented that the company had received the White House’s demand to divest or face a ban.

A year later, a day after the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously to advance a bill that would enshrine the administration’s position into law and set a hard deadline, Biden signaled his backing for the legislative effort. Asked by reporters on March 8, 2024, if he would support the TikTok bill if it got to his desk, Biden said, “If they pass it, I’ll sign it.”