James Antle of the Washington Examiner digs beneath the headlines in reports about President Biden’s poor polling.
President Joe Biden’s team had hoped the signing of the infrastructure law last year would be a turning point for the administration.
No such luck.
Instead, Biden’s position has looked weaker despite some other positives he could point to — falling unemployment, a respectable January jobs report and the upward revision of previous mixed ones, a Supreme Court vacancy Republicans might allow to be filled with relative ease, and the lifting of COVID-19 mandates in the bluest of states.
February’s Quinnipiac poll shows that just 37% of registered voters approve of Biden’s performance in office, while an eye-popping 56% disapprove. Biden’s approval rating among Hispanics sits at 36%, with 49% disapproving. He is underwater with women and barely breaking even with college-educated white women.
CNN’s most recent poll was even worse. It showed 58% disapproving of how Biden has fared as president, with 41% registering their approval. Among independents, Biden’s approval rating was just 36%. Of the respondents who disapproved, 56% couldn’t think of a single positive thing to say. The 1 in 4 who approved said much the same thing.
The right track/wrong track numbers are abysmal, with polls regularly finding the percentage of people who see the country moving in the right direction stuck in the 20s and 30s. The RealClearPolitics polling average finds 64.4% pick wrong track to 28.1% who pick right track — a gap of 36.3 percentage points.
Some individual surveys are worse still. An NBC News poll pegged the split at 72% wrong track, 50 points greater than those who picked right track. Gallup’s numbers for “satisfaction with the way things are going in U.S.” is near a 40-year low.
Whenever Biden has any good news (a drop in jobless claims), it is canceled out by something more negative. …
