Joe Biden’s Presidency Is Fading Away

Joe Biden Takes Hit in New Poll Numbers: Like a bad chest cold, President Joe Biden just can’t shake his low approval numbers.

He often remains in the low 40s when voters are asked whether they think he is doing a good job.

A recent poll has even found his approval dropping to only 41 percent while 51 percent disapprove.

To be sure, Biden has polled low before only to see his Democrat party do better than expected in the 2022 Midterm elections. Plus, he has plenty of time to raise these numbers before his re-election battle in 2024.

The Yuck Factor In Joe Biden Polling

But there is cause for concern in the new poll from Monmouth University.

The same pollsters in January had Biden at 43 percent approval so this is only a small drop, but even Democrat ally NBC News calls the latest numbers “stagnant.”

In March, Monmouth also found that Vice President Kamala Harris only scored a 36 percent approval rating.

Not all voters consider the vice president when they make their final choices during the voting process. However, the latest results mean the president has work to do with the American people. Democrats are holding up as prime supporters of Biden (86 percent approve) and that is unsurprising considering the polarization in American politics.

Meanwhile, 92 percent of Republicans disapprove. But centrists are where Biden needs support. Only 30 percent of Independents like the job Biden is doing, while 57 percent disapprove, according to Monmouth.

This Country Is Going in the Wrong Direction

It will also be difficult for the president because the respondents in the Monmouth poll do not have confidence in the direction of the country. Only 22 percent of those surveyed said the country is on the right track and 72 percent say it is on the wrong track.

Biden has a better showing with women as 45 percent of them approve of the job he is doing, but that is not much better than the overall total of 41 percent approval that was found.

The poll has a low sample rate of 805 adults. It is obviously better to have more people surveyed, pollsters usually attempt to collect between 1,000 and 1,500 respondents for a better random sample.

In an average of all approval polls monitored by aggregator FiveThirtyEight, Joe Biden is sitting at 43 percent. It has been at that level since September of 2022.

Its Negative Perceptions of the Economy

What has been the problem? Most likely the economy is a top concern. Seventy-five percent of Americans said “strengthening the economy” is the most important wish, according to the Pew Research Center. This is frustrating for Biden who often touts his record on job creation, and the unemployment rate is indeed low at 3.6 percent.

Nearly every month new jobs increase beyond economists’ predictions. We are not in a recession, but inflation persists and many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck with low levels of savings.

High-interest rates make credit card balances expensive to pay off, and rising mortgage rates result in new home purchases to be out of reach.

Plus, the stock market has struggled and home values for existing owners have gone down. That means people feel less wealthy who would have otherwise had higher home equity and better retirement balances which they enjoyed before the Covid-10 pandemic.

Generation Z Voters Are Frustrated

Another issue with Biden has been the lackluster approval among young people. His plan to forgive student debt has been waylaid in the courts and is not likely to receive a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court. The president just approved oil drilling on public lands in Alaska, something he always promised he would never let happen.

This decision puts a chill into twenty-somethings who believe climate change is the biggest problem facing the country.

In foreign policy, the terrible American retreat from Afghanistan still smarts. Not everyone approves of continued aid to Ukraine in the war against Russia. And illegal immigration seems to worsen each day, not to mention the opioid epidemic that is killing thousands of Americans each month.

In hypothetical match-ups with former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Biden barely leads and he often garners support, once again, in the low 40s.

Another problem for Biden is that no major legislative initiatives in his Build Back Better agenda are likely to pass a House of Representatives controlled by Republicans.

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He will have to continue to paint all of the GOP with the label of “MAGA” and tarnish Trump and DeSantis or whoever wins the Republican presidential nomination as being extremists who are election deniers, for guns, and against abortion.

This formula worked in 2022, but may not be enough to push Biden over the edge in 2024.  

Author Expertise and Experience

Serving as 19FortyFive’s Defense and National Security Editor, Dr. Brent M. Eastwood is the author of Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare. He is an Emerging Threats expert and former U.S. Army Infantry officer. You can follow him on Twitter @BMEastwood. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Foreign Policy/ International Relations.