Robert Schmad writes for the Washington Free Beacon about contrasting polling numbers for President Biden and his predecessor.
President Joe Biden’s average approval rating has hit a record low, according to RealClearPolitics‘s aggregation of polling data.
Only 37.7 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing, an even lower figure than pollsters found at the end of June, when Biden became the least-popular president in U.S. history. The president’s disapproval rating, meanwhile, has risen to 56.7 percent.
Former president Donald Trump’s favorability rating is 5 points higher than Biden’s, RealClearPolitics found, and fewer than 2 points shy of his all-time high. Pollsters have consistently underestimated Trump’s popularity, a New York Times report found in 2020.
The polling news comes as the Biden administration in recent months has made several controversial moves. Many economists, including former Obama administration officials, have blamed Biden’s $2 trillion stimulus plan for 40-year-high inflation numbers. Biden also sold a million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese state-controlled company, the Washington Free Beacon reported Thursday.
While Trump and Biden are reportedly gearing up for a 2024 rematch, Biden’s support in the Democratic Party is wavering. Multiple reports have indicated that Democrats don’t want Biden, who will turn 82 in 2024, to run for reelection. A New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday found that a huge majority of Democrats, including 94 percent of Democrats under 30, don’t want Biden as the party’s standard-bearer.
“The president is hemorrhaging support,” the Times reported.
It’s just the latest piece of bad news for the president, who has seen other recent polling problems.
What’s hurting him badly is that he’s at 21 percent approval with white people, as well as with people between the ages of 18-34. With independents, Biden is at 19 percent approval and 67 percent disapproval. Yikes. Check how unpopular he is in Georgia and Pennsylvania, two states likely to have tough Senate races. That’s going to hurt the Democrats badly. But he’s underwater in every state, except Hawaii and Vermont.