Jim Geraghty of National Review Online reports bad economic polling numbers for President Biden and his Democratic colleagues.
This weekend brought two national polls focusing on the midterms, and while the topline numbers are good for Republicans, let’s home in on how Americans currently feel about the economy, in light of Biden’s claim that it is “strong as hell.”
In the Siena/New York Times poll, just 24 percent of likely voters said the country is on the right track, while 64 percent said the country is headed in the wrong direction. When asked whether they approve or disapprove of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president, 39 percent said they approve, while 58 percent said they disapprove. When asked an open-ended question about what the biggest problem facing the country is, 26 percent said the economy (or jobs, or the stock market) and another 18 percent said inflation. Just 5 percent said “abortion.” Also note that among Hispanics, 37 percent list the economy as the top problem facing the country.
In the YouGov/CBS News Battleground Tracker poll, very few Americans share Biden’s opinion that the U.S. economy is as “strong as hell.” Just 6 percent of respondents said that “things in America today” are going very well, and just 5 percent rated the economy as “very good.”
Overall, 29 percent rated “things in America today” as going very well or well, and 71 percent rated them as either going badly or going very badly — with 40 percent choosing the worst option. Just 27 percent of Americans rated the economy as very good or fairly good, while 30 percent rated it “fairly bad” and 40 percent rated it as “very bad.” Only 15 percent of respondents said the economy was getting better, while 65 percent said it was getting worse, and 20 percent said it was staying about the same.
