The most obvious source of potential improvement for Democratic candidates over Biden is voters in their own party. One reason Biden’s overall rating is so low is that multiple national surveys have found that only about three-fourths or less of Democrats give him positive marks. But it’s unlikely many of those Democrats will express their dissatisfaction with Biden by voting for Republicans in November. The recent Senate polls quantify that dynamic. In Quinnipiac’s Georgia survey, for instance, 97% of Democrats said they are supporting Warnock over Walker, even though only 72% of Democrats said they approved of Biden’s performance.

Young people are demonstrating the most striking gap between discontent over Biden and support for Democratic candidates. Those two recent Senate polls found Democrats holding substantial leads among voters younger than 34, even though Biden’s approval rating with those same groups had tumbled below 30% in Georgia and to around 40% in Wisconsin. A recent Monmouth University national survey found that almost 3 in 5 voters younger than 34 wanted Democrats to control Congress, even though only a little more than 1 in 4 of those young adults approved of Biden’s performance. In these state and national surveys, Democratic candidates are also running well above Biden’s anemic approval rating among independents.

Democrats see these contrasts as evidence that many voters disenchanted with Biden remain even more alienated from a Republican Party defined by its loyalty to Trump.