Key Points
- President Biden’s approval rating has hit historic lows in a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll.
- Biden is losing ground with latino voters and independent voters.
- The President may sink even lower, with Build Back Better stalled out in the Senate.
COVID cases are up. Consumer prices are up. Biden’s approval rating, not surprisingly, is down. A new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist job approval poll has the President at just 41%; a historic low. Biden is falling out of favor with both Democrats and independents at an alarming rate.
“When broken down by party, 29 percent of independents polled said they strongly approve or approve of the job Biden is doing, while 66 percent said they strongly disapprove or disapprove,” The Hill reports.
Biden is also struggling to connect with Latino voters (19 percent of the U.S. population). 65 percent said they disapproved of Biden’s job performance —just 33 percent said they approved. Latino voters have grown by 30 percent in the last 12 years. Losing their support should be a wake-up call for the White House and congressional Democrats.
“There’s lots of uncertainty out there,” Marist College Institute of Public Opinion director Lee Miringoff told PBS. “[Biden’s] being hit for lack of leadership. He’s being hit for the fatigue of the pandemic and concerns about inflation.”
“The independents were the major difference” in this poll, Miringoff continues. “The one good thing [for Biden] about losing independents and not doing as well with Democrats is those are groups you can win back.”
Biden’s approval rating for the PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll peaked back in April, when 54 percent of adults gave him a thumbs up. But it’s been downhill since, getting so bad that the White House met with mainstream media outlets to ask for more favorable coverage.
“President Biden’s disastrous performance…has led to low approval ratings…so what does the White House do? It blames the messenger: the media,” the New York Post reports. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a concentrated effort on pro-Biden headlines, including “Biden is Delivering the Fastest Economic Recovery in History. Why Hasn’t Anyone Noticed?” and “It’s a Biden Boom —and No One Has Noticed Yet.”
How low can Joe go? Well, with negotiations stalled out on his $2 trillion Build Back Better social spending and climate package, this may not be rock bottom for the President.
