Biden Approval Polling Roundup
Our research team has been tracking President Joe Biden’s approval rating since the day he took office — and if you enjoy following politics, you may have been, too. In the year-and-a-half since the start of his presidency, Biden’s approval rating has steadily declined, suffering through ongoing economic turbulence, conflict abroad, and record-high inflation.
Biden’s approval rating flutters in recent weeks, but doesn’t fully recover
Since the beginning of this year, Biden’s approval rating has held relatively steady even as it has slightly decreased week over week. The chart below compiles SurveyMonkey’s own tracking data from the beginning of 2022. In the latest week of data, 40% of Americans approve and 58% disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president, a bit worse than his 45%-53% split in the first week of 2022.
Looking back, FiveThirtyEight’s presidential approval tracking shows a clear decline in Biden’s approval rating over the course of his presidency, with a clear turning point in August of last year. Since then, the number of people who disapprove of the job he is doing as president has consistently outnumbered the number who approve, on par with our data.
As you can see, after many weeks of near-identical approval ratings from January through May, Biden saw a real decline in his approval this summer and then a quick recovery coming on the heels of several legislative wins. That jump is evident both in the SurveyMonkey data and in the aggregated polling data from FiveThirtyEight.
Biden remains popular among Democrats, people of color
In a hyper-partisan era, Biden has enjoyed consistently high approval ratings among Democrats but has not made any progress in gaining approval among Republicans (just 7% approve of him in these latest data, nearly unchanged since the beginning of the year).
Most of that dip and subsequent jump in approval, noted above, came from changing opinions among Democrats. Less than half of independents give Biden a positive approval rating, even after the series of legislative victories including the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act.
It’s worth calling out seniors and Black Americans as two key constituents in Biden’s presidency. A solid 60% of Blacks approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president – the highest of any racial group (51% of Asians, 44% of Hispanics, 35% of whites and 27% of adults of another race say the same), but still down 7 points from early January when 67% of Black adults approved of Biden. Older Black Americans (age 65+) overwhelmingly approve of Biden’s job performance (86%), far higher than Blacks age 35-64 (62%) and 18-34 (47%).
Just over half (51%) of those 65+ approve of Biden, far higher than adults age 18-34 (35%) and 35-64 (38%). But, among Republicans, younger adults have a more favorable view of Biden: 11% of Republicans age 18-34 approve of Biden’s job performance compared with Republicans age 34-65 (6%) and Republicans 65+ (4%).
What’s next
Amid ongoing economic uncertainty and record-high levels of inflation, Americans are hyper-focused on economic issues heading into this year’s midterm elections. Four in 10 (40%) point to “jobs and the economy” as the issue that matters most to them, a priority that has remained relatively unchanged since the beginning of the year and is especially top of mind for Republicans (52% rate it as the most important issue vs. 28% of Democrats).
A recent Gallup poll shows 35% mention an aspect of the economy (e.g. inflation, fuel prices, or general mentions of the economy) as the most important issue
Even still, Americans are divided on which political party does a better job handling the economy: 44% of Americans trust the Democratic party while 47% trust the Republican party according to the latest July NYT|Momentive Consumer Confidence Index, roughly unchanged from May 2019 (44% trusted the Democratic Party; 45% trusted the Republican party).
That’s all for this week! Thanks as always for reading.