Poll tightening in the fall is not a fixture on the election calendar, but it is a trend that has been noted during the past couple of years, according to Monmouth University Polling Institute Director Patrick Murray.

“For example, in the blue wave of 2018, the polls had Democrats doing even better over the summer,” Murray told the Washington Examiner. “There is not one specific reason, but the summer information cycle tends to benefit Democrats.”

“This year, it was the [Supreme Court‘s] Dobbs [v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization] decision,” he said. “But as we get closer to Election Day, and Republicans engage with more active messaging outreach, we see that advantage shrink.”

Biden’s average approval rating is hovering at about 42%, while his disapproval is 52%, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight. His disapproval is a slightly worse 53%, according to RealClearPolitics. A Monmouth poll Murray published this week, for example, found Biden’s approval-disapproval at 38%-54%.

But Biden’s popularity, although still poor compared to his predecessors, is better than it was in July when he was averaging 38% approval-57% disapproval, according to FiveThirtyEight. His record average approval low was a slightly worse 37% that same month, according to RealClearPolitics.

Republican pollster Ed Goeas contended Biden’s polling is not seasonal but structural. The Tarrance Group partner attributed Biden’s pre-summer “mid-30s” approval slump to Republicans, who never liked him, and independents “who took a step away from him” after last year’s deadly Afghanistan withdrawal and persistent southern border problems demonstrated “incompetence.”

“Progressives of the Democratic Party became negative on him because they felt he wasn’t pushing their agenda enough,” he said. “Progressives started coming back in the summer, based on the Supreme Court and abortion issue. … By doing better with progressives, all of a sudden he started moving back up into the 40s.”

For Goeas, the newfound competitiveness of races, including the Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania Senate contests, is correlated, in part, with Biden’s “ultra-MAGA” Republican attacks, which have appealed to progressives but may have simultaneously polarized GOP and independent voters, citing his internal polls. That is in addition to concerns about the country’s direction and the economy before next week’s inflation report and amid rising gas prices.

“The abortion issue is still there, but they hammered it so hard in the summer,” Goeas said. “Republicans have a big 20-point advantage in two main areas. One is on the economy. … The other is an issue that seems to be seeping in to replace the abortion issue to some extent with some of these swing voters, and that’s crime.”

Biden’s “upside-down” polling and the prominence of the economy on the people’s minds are “a ding” for Democrats, Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos agreed. But he disagreed with Goeas on the importance of abortion to November’s elections.

Paleologos alluded to the Arizona and New Hampshire Senate races, though he disclosed that his data depended on a small respondent subset. Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) are considered to have an edge over Blake Masters (R-AZ) and Don Bolduc (R-NH), according to the Cook Political Report, FiveThirtyEight, and RealClearPolitics.

“There’s a firewall that’s being built by those incumbent senators, such that the issue of abortion is such a motivator it’s an offset to the overwhelming advantage among men who are independents who are upset at Biden and upset at the economy,” Paleologos said. “What we’re seeing in a couple of these states is that it is a wedge, and it breaks cleanly by gender.”

“If prices of gas come down and people are feeling better about the economy and Biden’s numbers continue to come up, then other issues like abortion and healthcare and threats to democracy and all these other polled issues might bubble up a bit,” he added.

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Biden’s polling aligns with that of former Presidents Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan at the corresponding point in their administrations but below that of former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and even Jimmy Carter. Republicans net-gained seven Senate seats and 63 House seats in Obama’s 2010 midterm elections, as well as eight Senate seats and 54 House seats in the 1994 contests under Clinton.