President Biden’s policy agenda is incredibly popular, much more popular than his opponent’s. But Biden the man? Not so much.

The question now is whom to blame for the approval gap between the president and his agenda: voters, the media or Biden himself.

Democrats have long argued that their policies are more popular than those of Republicans. In a recent blind test conducted by YouGov, that was unmistakably true. The polling organization asked Americans what they thought about major policies proposed by Biden and Donald Trump without specifying who proposed them. The idea was to see how the public perceived ideas when stripped of tribal associations.

Biden’s agenda was the winner, hands down.

Of the 28 Biden proposals YouGov asked about, 27 were supported by more people than opposed them. Impressively, 24 received support from more than 50 percent of respondents.

The most popular Biden policy proposal is requiring criminal and mental background checks for all gun purchases. This idea was favored by 82 percent of respondents – including 70 percent of voters who self-identified as Trump supporters. Biden’s least popular idea – the only one of the 28 that was underwater – was a pledge of 10 years of U.S. military support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. (Only 30 percent liked this.)

Trump’s policies, on the other hand, fare much worse. Of 28 major proposals YouGov asked about, only nine received at least plurality support (more people supported than opposed them). Even more damning, just six were favored by a majority of respondents.

Trump’s most popular idea was phasing out imports of essential goods from China over the next four years, at 59 percent approval. The least popular was to give presidents control over independent regulatory agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission. Only 19 percent supported the proposal, including just 27 percent of self-identified Trump supporters. (Gee, I wonder why voters might oppose that. Maybe it’s because one candidate wants to be a “Day One” dictator?)

The contrast between the favorability of the rivals’ agendas is particularly striking when put side by side. Some of Trump’s most popular policies are about as well-liked as Biden’s least popular ones.

To be clear, a policy’s popularity is not necessarily evidence of its merits. (If I believed this, I’d probably be in a different business, one that doesn’t involve trying to change people’s minds.) But the pattern is nonetheless remarkable, especially given voters’ lackluster impressions of the Biden brand – both broadly and on individual policies.

Biden’s presidential approval rating is abysmal, and he’s been trailing Trump in general polling for many months. Astonishingly, voters perceive Biden to be worse on many issues that, based on the substance of his ideas, should be his strengths.

For example, recent polls have found that voters trust Trump more than Biden on guns and gun violence. Yet in the YouGov data, they prefer Biden’s approach to gun policy, which not only includes requiring background checks for all gun purchases (again, his most popular idea) but also banning sales of assault-style rifles. Meanwhile, a plurality rejects one of Trump’s most visible gun-related proposals (arming teachers).

Similarly, Trump trounces Biden on abstract issues such as the economy and taxes. But, if you look at what the two men have proposed in these realms, Biden’s ideas (raise taxes on billionaires, increase the minimum wage) are generally more popular than Trump’s (impose a 10 percent tariff on all imports, cut corporate tax rates).

There are different ways to interpret these patterns.

One is that voters, sadly, don’t care much about policy. GOP strategists sometimes say that voters may view Trump as a coarse, adulterous jerk, but they still support him for his policies. Meanwhile, Biden may be a decent human being, they say, but voters don’t like where he stands on the issues. These data suggest that no, maybe Trump’s jerkiness is the reason for his appeal, and Biden is disliked despite his policy views.

At the very least, voters appear uninformed about the candidates’ agendas. This would be understandable given that political media coverage often emphasizes the horserace rather than the issues (sometimes shorthanded as too much odds, not enough stakes). Journalists must provide better information about what each candidate intends to do if granted a second term, and how well those designs align with voters’ preferences.

It’s also hard to escape the conclusion that Biden has been an ineffective messenger for an agenda that should be easy to sell. That was certainly the case at last week’s disastrous debate performance, when he failed to articulate (or sometimes even remember) what his positions were and why they were superior to Trump’s.

But this problem long predates his debate performance. Trump, the master marketer, somehow managed to convince the public that he’s on the right side of every issue, details be damned. And Biden somehow managed (so far anyway) to take a winning platform and sink it.

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Reach Catherine Rampell at crampell@washpost.com.