US president Joe Biden’s approval rating hit an all-time low on Monday, with just 34 per cent of respondents to a new poll saying they approve of the job he is doing in the White House.
By contrast, 61 per cent said they were dissatisfied with his performance when consulted for the latest survey from Monmouth University, conducted between 30 November and 4 December.
The remaining five per cent of people surveyed said they had not yet made up their minds about the president’s first term.
The Biden administration’s approach to tackling illegal immigration (69 per cent disapproval) and taming inflation (68 per cent disapproval) were identified as areas of particular concern, according to Monmouth.
Meanwhile, 53 per cent were disappointed with the president’s record on job creation and 52 per cent by his administration’s work on bolstering transport and energy infrastructure.
“The Biden administration keeps touting their infrastructure investments and a host of positive economic indicators,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
“Those data points may be factual, but most Americans are still smarting from higher prices caused by post-pandemic inflation. This seems to be what’s driving public opinion. There is political danger in pushing a message that basically tells people their take on their own situation is wrong.”
Monmouth’s latest findings mean the president has suffered a 10 per cent slide in his approval ratings from the 14-month high of 44 per cent he enjoyed in July and is now one percentage point less popular than his own vice president Kamala Harris.
Disapproval of his performance has meanwhile climbed nine per cent from the 52 per cent recorded in July.
Although Mr Biden’s approval rating has never been higher than 46 per cent during his time as commander-in-chief, by Monmouth’s reckoning, the new score is even lower than the 37 per cent he chalked up in a Wall Street Journal survey earlier this month, which scored him below likely presidential rival Donald Trump in a hypothetical matchup, a growing cause for concern with the next election now less than 11 months away.
In worse news for him, the latest New York Times-Siena Collage national poll of registered voters records a 46-44 per cent split in the Republican’s favour, which roughly tallies with the current polling average noted by RealClearPolitics, which has Mr Trump ahead on 47.1 per cent of the vote to 44.3 per cent and finds him ahead in or tied with the president in six of the nine national polls it cites.
Other worrying recent surveys for the Democrat include one from CNN that found him trailing in the crucial swing states of Michigan and Georgia and another from The NYT and Siena College that had him behind Mr Trump in five of six key battlegrounds: Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, with only Wisconsin narrowly bucking the trend.
Reasons for Mr Biden’s faltering popularity range from concerns about his advanced age at 81, dismay at his apparently unconditional support for Israel in its war against Hamas and House Republicans noisily promoting their impeachment inquiry into him, despite so far falling to produce any evidence to substantiate the allegation that the president ever profited inappropriately from his son Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings.
For his part, Mr Biden himself is said to be well aware of his waning support from the electorate and expressed his frustration to his aides in private last month before breaking for Thanksgiving, according to The Washington Post, complaining that his messaging was not being heard despite the US economy growing and the rate of unemployment falling.
When reporters have asked the president about his predicament, he has tended to impatiently brush them aside and accuse them of paying too much attention to “the wrong polls”.
