Astounding new poll numbers for President Joe Biden show just how badly Americans think he's performing as president, with nearly six ...
Astounding new poll numbers for President Joe Biden show just how badly Americans think he's performing as president, with nearly six in 10 survey respondents saying there's absolutely nothing he's done that they approve of.
Only 41% of Americans think Biden is doing a good job, according to a CNN poll released Thursday. Most, a whopping 58%, say they disapprove of how he is handling the job.
The U.S. adults who are in Biden's corner are almost all Democrats. The president still holds an 83% approval rating among members of his own party, although that dropped from 94% last summer. Just 36% of self-identified independents said they approve of Biden's performance, and only 9% of Republicans approved. More Americans strongly disapprove of how Biden is leading the nation, 41%, than strongly approve, 15%.
According to CNN, Biden's numbers have worsened as the network's polling has become more evenly representative of the two major parties, rather than tilting toward Democrats as it has in the past.
Perhaps the most stunning number from the poll was that 56% of survey respondents who disapproved of Biden's overall performance could not name a single thing he's done that they approve of. Rather than say anything nice about Biden's job as president, they chose to say nothing at all.
"Look at how bad these numbers are," CNN's John King said Thursday, discussing the survey.
He observed that Biden's achievements with the coronavirus relief bill last year and the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package are not "sinking in" with the American public, which continues to disapprove of Biden's handling of the economy and the coronavirus pandemic.
"That is a stunning number of the failure to communicate the legitimate successes of the Biden administration," King said.
Whatever successes Biden may have had, and his opponents would contend there haven't been many; rising inflation and the president's failure to "shut down" the coronavirus as promised are leading causes for his poor standing with the American people. Biden's approval rating on the economy fell by eight points to 37% since early December, while his ratings for handling the pandemic decreased nine points to 45%.
Overall, 57% of Americans said the first year of the Biden administration has been more of a failure than a success, and there appears to be no universally popular way for the president to improve his standing because Americans are sharply divided.
On the question of how best to deal with the pandemic, 51% of survey respondents said that "it's time to learn to live with the virus," while 48% said that "stopping the spread of the virus must continue to be the highest priority."
Those numbers are split by party lines: Almost three-quarters of Democrats, 73%, said that stopping the virus needs to be priority number one, while 72% of Republicans and 54% of independents are ready to live with the virus.
What does unite three quarters of Americans are feelings of pandemic "burn out," with 60% describing themselves as angry, 58% saying they are worried, and nearly half, 49%, saying they were confused.
CNN's poll was conducted by SSRS between Jan. 10 and Feb. 6 among a random national sample of 1,527 adults initially reached by mail.
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