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President Joe Biden's approval ratings are low. Even his own party's rank-and-file think he's too old for the job and would rather someone else were their nominee for president.

But Biden is not a drag for down-ticket Democrats, who have been overperforming in special elections this year and who have been winning ballot initiative battles. Biden isn't even a drag on himself, as a critical percentage of voters in battleground states say they will vote for him even if they don't approve of him or his job performance.

"It's kind of been a long time coming. Democrats have steadily improved" in their voter share in a wide array of races, says Arizona-based pollster Mike Noble, founder of Noble Predictive Insights. Since the election of former President Donald Trump in 2016 and the judicial upending of guaranteed abortion rights in 2022, Democrats have improved their support among college-educated voters, and "those voters are more apt to vote in elections that have an abysmal turnout," such as special elections, Noble says.

An analysis of 2023 special elections results by the elections website FiveThirtyEight found that Democrats overperformed by an average of 10 percentage points. That means that even when Democrats lost special elections, they did better than the political landscape would indicate, given the partisan breakdown in the district and the electoral history there.

A look at special elections in battleground states underscores that August analysis.

In Pennsylvania, a Democrat won a special election for a state House seat by a 3-1 margin, compared with the party's 2-1 win in the 2022 general election. A state Senate seat in a heavily Republican district stayed in GOP hands in a special election earlier this year, but the victor won by a smaller percentage than the Republican candidate did in November 2022.

In Wisconsin, the GOP won a July special election for a state assembly seat, 54% to 46%. That's a smaller margin than in 2022, when the Republican won the seat with 61% of the vote, compared to 39% for the Democratic candidate.

A special election for a Wisconsin state Senate seat was barely won by the GOP candidate, 50.8% to 49.1%. During the previous election, in 2020, the Republican won far more comfortably, with 54% of the vote, compared to 46% for the Democratic candidate.

In a regularly scheduled election, Democrats scored an upset win for a seat in the state Supreme Court, providing a critical liberal majority on a panel that may decide abortion rights, redistricting and other issues. Democratic Judge Janet Protasiewicz won by more than 11 percentage points in a state where whisper-thin margins are more common.

In New Hampshire, a Democrat won a run-off for a state House seat by more than 11 percentage points, after winning the exact same number of votes as the GOP rival in the 2022 general election.

In Virginia, Democrats flipped a state Senate seat in a January special election. Republicans retained a House of Delegates seat in a special election that month but by a substantially smaller margin than the GOP won the seat in 2021.

Republicans made few inroads in 2023 special elections – the most notable being in Maine, where the party flipped a state House seat in a June special election. Democrats still hold an 81-seat majority in the chamber.

Republicans as well as nonpartisan analysts caution that special elections are not necessarily predictive of regularly scheduled general elections, since special elections tend to bring out only the most motivated voters.

In New Hampshire, for example, the Democratic Party is more organized, better funded and professional in nature, while the GOP relies more on volunteer and grassroots workers, says Scott Spradling, a nonpartisan political analyst in the Granite State. That gives Democrats an advantage in special elections, where a big part of the battle is getting people to show up and vote, he says.

But the trend favoring Democrats is notable because the party's highest ranking member, Biden, is faring poorly in polling on his job performance and overall approval.

"The old-school concern is about the approval rating being underwater," meaning the official has a higher disapproval than approval rating, says Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. But because voters aren't too happy with politicians in either party – and are far more entrenched in their partisan leanings than in the past – "you can still win and not be above water" in approval ratings, Yost says.

Two things are boosting Democrats, analysts say: abortion politics and Trump himself, who is not only turning off some independent voters but causing schisms in his own party.

Intraparty fights in battleground states (literally, in Michigan, where physical confrontations have occurred between pro-Trump and Trump-skeptical Republican officials) are dividing the party. In Arizona, the internal battle could weaken the GOP nominee next year for a critical Senate seat.

In Georgia, the GOP has two wings: the one dominated by the likes of firebrand Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the one led by politicians like Gov. Brian Kemp, who Thursday quashed the idea of holding a special session to oust Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to stop her prosecution of Trump.

If Trump is indeed the GOP nominee in 2024, "a lot of people will stay home," says University of Georgia political science professor Scott Ainsworth, giving Biden a chance to win a red state where he prevailed by a very narrow margin in 2020.

Meanwhile, Trump has been motivating not just his devoted base but Democratic voters who might not be crazy about their own likely nominee and don't want another Trump term, Ainsworth says.

"We maybe have entered an era where people don't feel excited about particular presidential nominees. Sometimes, it's the other person's negatives. Biden doesn't always inspire some voters, but by the same token, he doesn't have the heavy baggage that Trump has," Ainsworth says.

Biden is outperforming himself in a number of battleground states – doing better in hypothetical head-to-head matchups against Trump than he is in his own approval ratings.

In Pennsylvania, a Franklin & Marshall poll found, just 3 in 10 voters think Biden is doing an "excellent" or "good" job. But the president would defeat his predecessor Trump 41% to 40%, the survey found.

In Arizona, a plurality of 49% of voters disapprove of Biden, compared to 40% who approve of him, according to an Emerson College poll. But Biden trails Trump by just 1-3 percentage points, depending on whether third-party candidates are included, the poll found.

In Michigan, half of voters disapprove of Biden's job performance, with 43% approving of it, Emerson College found. But in a head-to-head matchup, Biden and Trump are tied, with 44% support each.

In Georgia, a Public Opinion Strategies poll found, 54% of Peach Staters disapprove of Biden and 43% approve of the president. But Biden would beat Trump, 44% to 43%, the survey found. The same polling firm got similar results in Nevada, where 52% of voters disapprove of Biden and 40% approve of him – but prefer Biden as the next president, with 46% supporting the incumbent president for reelection and 43% wanting Trump back, the poll found.

In Wisconsin, the disconnect between approval and support for reelection is especially stark. A Marquette University poll found that while 53% of voters disapprove of Biden's job performance (45% approve of it), they still favor Biden (52%) over Trump (43%) for president in the 2024 election.

A big part of Trump's problem in Wisconsin is Republicans, says Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette poll, noting that Biden has more support in his own party than Trump does among GOPers.

"We think of Trump as having an iron grip on the GOP, but actually he faces a minority of around 30% of Republicans that don't care for him, compared to some 14% of Dems who don't like Biden," Franklin says.

That is playing out in other critical states, Yost says.

"Ultimately, when it comes down to voting for someone, it's not just the person, but the acceptability of his or her opponent," Yost says.

For Democrats, Trump may be their best asset.

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