How popular is joe biden

How popular is Joe Biden?

Weekly opinion polls from The Economist and YouGov, tracking Joe Biden’s approval ratings and the issues that are most important to voters

S INCE 2009 The Economist has collaborated with YouGov, an online pollster, to conduct a regular political poll. Each week, YouGov asks 1,500 adult citizens how they feel about a range of issues—from presidential job-approval, to relevant news events, to important government policy proposals and the state of the economy. We have collected the results of each survey to present a series of interactive data visualisations that explores what America has thought about politics and policy for every week over the past decade.

Presidential approval

Whether Americans approve or disapprove of the job their president is doing is perhaps the single most frequently asked question in political polling. On average, presidents need to have an approval rating that is roughly five to ten percentage points higher than their disapproval rating to have a decent shot at re-election, or to put enough pressure on Congress to pass their agenda. Anything less and they risk backlash from the public and the stalling of the government’s programme. In the chart below, you can see trends in presidential approval for the past three presidents and selected approval ratings for Mr Biden from different demographic groups.

Issues and policy

Joe Biden began his presidency by passing a massively popular economic stimulus and covid-19 relief bill. He ended his first 100 days, and will begin the rest of his presidency, trying to get Republicans in Washington on board with an ambitious infrastructure-spending bill, which the public also favours. Mr Biden has also pledged to find a leading role for America in tackling climate change, and has said he wants to to restore and strengthen America’s traditional foreign alliances. Each policy marks a break with the previous administration.

As his presidency moves forward, Mr Biden faces new challenges. The share of Americans who view crime and criminal-justice reform, immigration or gun control as the country’s most important problem is on the rise, with these issues gaining importance at the expense of health care, the economy, and government spending.

Joe Biden’s policy agenda has so far been very popular with voters. According to data compiled by Christopher Warshaw, a professor at George Washington University, and supplemented by YouGov’s polling, the Democrat’s economic and infrastructure stimulus packages are particularly popular. Ranked by popularity against the main policies of recent presidencies, from both executive and legislative branches, Mr Biden’s are in the top half.

But polls suggest the Democratic Party’s positions on issues such as gun control and the border are much less popular than its ideas on government spending and economic stimulus. This could be a potential barrier to future policy initiatives. Moreover, Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have pledged to oppose Mr Biden’s agenda, regardless of how popular it is, even with their own voters.

Return to this page each week for our newest The Economist/YouGov polling numbers about the public’s opinion towards their government. You can read about YouGov’s methodology here.

Sources: YouGov; Christopher Warshaw; The Economist

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Do Americans approve or disapprove of Joe Biden?

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Our average includes all candidates that FiveThirtyEight considers “major.” Candidates with insufficient polling data are not displayed in the averages. State polling averages are adjusted based on national trends, which means candidates’ averages can shift even in the absence of fresh state polls. Read more about the methodology.

Joe Biden Approval

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Why You Should Still Pay Attention To Joe Biden’s Approval Rating

Alex Wong / Getty Images

When it comes to presidential approval ratings, the days of big swings in opinion and sky-high ratings are gone.

Consider that former President Donald Trump’s approval rating mostly hovered between 40 and 45 percent, earning him the distinction of having the steadiest approval rating of any president since World War II. In fact, one way Trump embodied the nickname “Teflon Don” so early was by how little his approval numbers moved in response to the many controversies swirling around him.

Now, the truth about Trump’s approval numbers is far more complicated, as we’ll touch on later, but just know they weren’t completely impervious to bad news. See the 3-point slide in the weeks following his poorly received response to the police killing of George Floyd in late May 2020.

‘> 1 Former President Barack Obama also saw small fluctuations in his approval numbers.

Did Joe Biden get lucky in 2020? | FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast

It’s early yet, but President Biden’s initial approval marks aren’t all that impressive, either. Or at least that’s true when compared to past presidents’ ratings in the first few months of their presidency, often referred to as the “honeymoon” period. (According to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker, 53 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance,

As of 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 11.

«> 2 whereas at this point in the presidency, most new presidents’ approval ratings have usually been closer to 60 percent.)

Related: How Popular Is Joe Biden? Read more. »

So if the new normal is presidential approval ratings that don’t change all that much, is it time to abandon them?

Not so fast. On the one hand, we do need to recalibrate our expectations of presidential approval ratings. They’re just not going to move that much in our hyper-polarized political climate. But that doesn’t mean approval ratings aren’t a useful window into how the public broadly views a president’s performance. Or that they can’t still signal a change in political fortunes. And once we move past the presidency, approval ratings of other American leaders, such as governors, see wider ranges of support largely because partisanship isn’t quite as baked in at the state level.

First, the presidency. Nowadays, it’s just harder to have a glowing approval rating. That’s in large part thanks to the rise of negative partisanship, which compels most members of the opposing party to disapprove of a new president right from the start. Consider Gallup’s presidential approval polling conducted the month after the last five inaugurations of new presidents. When Gallup surveyed Americans in February 1993 after Bill Clinton became president, they found that 74 percent of Democrats approved of Clinton’s job performance, compared to 24 percent of Republicans. Now, that 50-point partisan gap in Clinton’s approval rating was nothing to sneeze at, but as the table below shows, it has only grown, with both Trump and Biden facing an 80-plus point gap along party lines in their early approval polls.

Presidential approval ratings have gotten more partisan

Approval rating in February of a president’s first year in office, overall and by partisan affiliation, since 1993

In short, the ceiling of a new president’s approval rating is somewhat baked in from the start. Of course, the flip side is that support from a president’s own party may be less likely to slip, which means the floor of a president’s job approval is also more baked in. For instance, while few Democrats ever approved of Trump, the reason his approval rating rarely sunk below 40 percent was because his approval rating among Republicans remained high. In his first year, it rarely dipped below 80 percent, and from late in 2018 to the time he left office, he averaged nearly 90 percent approval among Republicans. So if Trump’s support among Republicans is any indication, Biden’s strong hold over Democratic voters should last beyond the early days of his presidency, too. Already, most recent polls have Biden polling at around 90 percent among Democrats.

related: Is The Presidential Honeymoon Over? Read more. »

But the important takeaway here is not that shifts in presidential approval can’t still happen. They can. We just need to adjust our expectations of how big these swings will be. Observers might have once looked for swings of 10 or more percentage points to gauge how the public responded to an especially big event — like Ronald Reagan’s double-digit decline after the Iran-Contra affair became public — but that just isn’t a useful barometer anymore.

Take the largest and quickest slide in Trump’s approval, which came after the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, toward the end of his time in office. That incident sparked national outrage, particularly given Trump’s role in inciting the violence, but even then, his approval rating had only fallen by about 5 points nine days later, according to FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracker. (There were only two other instances where Trump’s approval rating fell by even half as much — so 2.5 or more points — in a nine-day period. Once in February 2017, after he issued executive orders to begin construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and to suspend the refugee program and prohibit entry for visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries, and then again in May 2017, after Trump dismissed James Comey as director of the FBI.)

Long story short: Big swings in presidential approval are probably a thing of the past. But small shifts in a president’s approval rating can still indicate meaningful changes in opinion that may foreshadow future electoral outcomes.

Shifts of 2 or 3 points can have real meaning if they’re based off of a number of polls conducted over a couple of weeks. But remember not to put too much stock into one poll that shows a dip (or uptick). It might be an outlier and mislead us as to how much opinion has actually moved.

«> 3 For instance, the fact that Trump’s approval rating was stuck in the lows 40s for almost his entire presidency suggested real electoral vulnerability. And it was a big reason why Democrats flipped the House in the 2018 midterms and Trump didn’t win reelection in 2020. Had Trump managed to get his approval north of 45 percent by Election Day 2020, he very well may have won, considering the narrow margins in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin and Republicans’ advantage in the Electoral College. We shouldn’t read too much into Biden’s approval rating at this point, but the fact that he is starting out in a stronger position than Trump, with an approval rating in the low 50s, is a good sign for him. If he can maintain an approval rating in that vicinity — or marginally raise it by a couple of points — that could help Democrats limit the typical midterm losses for the president’s party in 2022 and help Biden win reelection in 2024.

Beyond the national picture, state-level approval polling on other public officials, such as governors, is still quite useful, too. Sometimes we even see high or low marks for a governor that cut against expectations because, in state-level politics, partisanship doesn’t quite as automatically send voters to their blue and red corners as it does in national politics.

related: Five Things The COVID-19 Bill Revealed About How Washington Will Work In The Biden Era Read more. »

Take Republican Gov. Charlie Baker. He gets better ratings from Democrats than he does from his own party members in deep-blue Massachusetts. MassINC Polling Group found his approval rating at 74 percent overall in February, but at 86 percent among Democrats compared to 62 percent among Republicans. By comparison, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mismanagement of his state’s COVID-19 response has not only prevented him from gaining much cross-party support from Republicans, but it has also cost him a meaningful slice of Democratic support. In recent surveys, only around 50 percent of Californians have said they approve of Newsom, an underwhelming showing for a Democrat in a state where Biden won 63 percent of the vote last November. In fact, Newsom’s middling numbers are partly the result of only about 7 in 10 Democrats supporting him.

This isn’t to say that partisanship doesn’t still play a role. For instance, Democrats who currently approve of Baker could very easily end up voting against him in 2022 should he run again — Massachusetts, after all, is a very blue state. But this is where approval ratings still have real value: Baker’s approval rating (74 percent) is somewhat higher than even his very strong share of the vote in his 2018 reelection win (67 percent of the vote), which suggests at least a few people have changed their minds about him, and in a positive direction. So if he can maintain such a high approval rating, that would give him a real chance of once again garnering strong cross-party backing in 2022 and winning a third term despite belonging to the weaker party in Massachusetts. On the other hand, Newsom looks likely to face a recall election this year, and while he is favored to survive it, a further drop in his support among Democrats could signal real vulnerability.

All in all, approval ratings can still tell us a lot about how the public views its leaders, even in our deeply polarized political environment. We just need to recalibrate our expectations for what’s meaningful when it comes to swings in presidential approval, and to remember that data on state officials can still reveal quite a bit about how well-liked or disliked someone is.

How popular is joe biden

You need to know It’s important to check the credibility interval when looking at different demographics in this poll. Credibility interval measures the level of precision, and polls of smaller demographic groups will be less precise. Read more in the methodology below.

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Notes from the newsroom

Biden approval rises to 40%, highest in two months

U.S. President Joe Biden’s public approval rose this week to its highest level since early June following a string of legislative victories, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday.

The two-day national poll found that 40% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance, a level of support that is historically low for a U.S. president.

On Sunday, the U.S. Senate approved a landmark bill to fight climate change, lower drug prices and raise some corporate taxes. The Biden-backed measure, which is expected to win approval in the U.S. House of Representatives, was a major legislative win that Democrats hope will boost voter enthusiasm ahead of November.

Biden signed another major bill into law on Tuesday to provide subsidies for U.S. semiconductor production and to boost efforts to make the United States more competitive with China’s science and technology efforts.

Tuesday’s poll showed 78% of respondents who identified as Democrats approved of Biden, up from 69% a month earlier. Only 12% of Republicans approved of Biden this week, a figure that has remained largely steady in recent weeks.

Biden’s lowest ratings have rivaled the lows of his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose popularity bottomed out at 33% in December 2017.

The economy continues to be the most important issue concerning Americans, 48 weeks running.

Note: The categories names have been shortened from how they appear in the survey. Find the original phrasing at the bottom of this page.

Reuters Polling Explorer

Notes The Reuters/Ipsos poll has been in operation since January 2012. Its surveys are conducted at least once per week online, in English, throughout the United States. Every poll has a minimum total sample size of 1,000 adults.

Reuters/Ipsos polls reflect the opinions of the American public. Their measurements are limited in precision, however, based on the number of people who responded to the survey. A poll finding that is based on a large sample of respondents is generally more precise than one that is based on a small sample. The precision limit of every poll finding is called its “credibility interval,” and it is expressed as an implied variance in the measurement. A reading of 50% with a credibility interval of 2 points means, for example, that poll finding is 50% but there is an outside chance that it could be as high as 52% and as low as 48%.

Category names in the survey of top issues have been shortened as follows: “The economy” is shortened from “Economy, unemployment, and jobs”; “Public health” from “Public health, disease, and illness”; “Health care” from “Health care system”; “Crime” from “Crime or corruption”; “Inequality” from “Inequality and discrimination”; “Enviornment” from “Environment and climate”; “Terrorism” from “Terrorism and extremism” and “War/conflict” from “War and foreign conflicts”.

Correction This page previously showed incorrect crosstab results for the poll conducted July 25-26, 2022.

Biden least popular president in decades – poll

President Joe Biden’s approval rating has hit a new low, making him the least popular modern US president at this period in a term of office, a new poll released on Friday shows.

The president’s approval rating has hit a new low of 38%, according to Gallup. This is down three points from the previous month and 12 points from July 2021, when 50% of Americans generally approved of the president’s job.

Meanwhile, 59% of Americans disapprove of the job Biden is doing, with 45% of those surveyed ‘strongly disapproving’ of his performance, compared with only 13% who ‘strongly approve’.

The poll also measured Biden’s average approval rating against previous presidents, going back as far as Dwight Eisenhower, in the sixth quarter of their terms. The data shows that Biden scores the lowest, at 40%. His nearest rivals in this regard are Presidents Trump and Carter, both with 42% at this time in their presidencies.

Biden did manage to maintain a 78% approval rating among members of his own party. However, his polling numbers have shrunk among independents, hitting an all-time low of 31%. The Democratic president’s approval among Republicans, not surprisingly, stands at 5%.

Public support for Biden has been on the decline for some time now, taking hits from the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, skyrocketing gas prices, record inflation, and the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to this, GDP data released on Thursday indicates that the economy has entered a recession.

The new poll comes after White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Friday that Joe Biden intends to run for re-election in 2024. However, according to a CNN survey published on Tuesday, 75% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters want someone else to represent the party in 2024.

The Gallup poll was conducted between July 5 and 26, with 1,013 adults interviewed by phone.

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