Republicans really, really dislike Biden. But it's not just about him.

Such hostile sentiments reflect a world in which each major party increasingly believes the other poses a threat to the country’s well-being. Consider that in 2019, the Pew Research Center found that about three-fourths of Americans thought that Democrats and Republicans not only disagreed over plans and policies, but that they also couldn’t agree on basic facts. This is certainly borne out in attitudes toward the economy: Democrats thought the economy was immediately doing worse once Trump took office, while Republicans immediately thought it was getting worse after Biden won the 2020 election. And in the lead-up to the 2020 contest, Pew also found that about 9 in 10 of both Biden and Trump supporters felt that the victory of the other party’s presidential nominee would lead to lasting harm, a sign of how each side increasingly finds the other to be an unacceptable political alternative. Looking ahead, such deep dislike will likely keep Republicans opposed to Biden regardless of his administration’s actions. It also means that like Trump, Biden will likely have to rely on his own party’s support to buoy his overall numbers. So far, Biden has managed to pull that off with approval from around 90 percent of Democrats, but fierce Republican opposition might mean that his overall approval rating moves only by small degrees, like Trump’s, making it hard for him to crack the mid-50s overall.