Joe Biden’s Approval Rating Maintains Fall, Hitting the Lowest Level of His Presidency

US President Joe Biden’s approval rating has been dropping consistently since its high water mark this time last year when it was at 53%, now a new poll has him at record lows and dropping across the board.

Only 39% of adults approve of US President Joe Biden’s job performance, according to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research poll.

This poll comes hot off the heels of a Quinnipiac University poll Wednesday that said Biden’s approval rating among Hispanics specifically is down to 26%, a demographic he won with 61% of the vote in 2020.

For all Americans, the issue is unsurprisingly that they believe the country is going in the wrong direction. Only 2 in 10 adults say that the US is on the right track.

Even among Democrats, Biden is becoming increasingly less popular. At the start of his presidency, his approval rating among members of his party was 97%. That is not too surprising, considering they likely voted for him, but midway through his second year, that support has dropped significantly, to only 73%.

Among Republicans, his support understandably started low, only 23% of Republicans supported Biden when he took office, but now it has dropped to a paltry 5%.

This is even lower than former US President Donald Trump’s approval rating at the same time during his presidency. Trump had an approval rating of 42% on May 21, 2018, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll averaging from that time.

Comparing apples to apples helps Biden a bit, but he still falls short of Trump. FiveThirtyEight’s poll averaging currently has Biden’s approval rating at 40.7%. Trump did have a period of time when his approval was below Biden’s current rating. From May 17, 2017 to February 2, 2018, Trump’s approval was below 40%, according to FiveThirtyEight. It never fell below 39.8% again until after the January 6, 2021 riots.

Recent polling has shown that inflation is the problem that most worries Americans, and that has played out again in this poll. Only 18% of Americans say Biden has done more to help the economy than hurt it. A slim majority, 51%, say his policies have hurt the economy, while another 30% say they haven’t made much difference.

Immigration is also hurting the president: only 36% of respondents approve of his handling of the situation on the southern border.

With midterm elections coming up in November, the Democrats will be in trouble if the president cannot turn around his approval rating. Midterm elections are notoriously tough on the party that holds the White House.

To make matters worse, primary exit polling indicates that Republican turnout has been much higher than for Democrats, a trend likely to continue in the midterms.