President Joe Biden’s approval rating just nosedived again, and it’s beginning to look like there won’t be anything he can do to reverse it before voting begins in the fall election. Historically, presidents need an approval rating of around 50 percent to win reelection. Currently, only 36% approve of Biden, down two points since April, matching his lowest-ever approval rating in July 2022, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Biden’s slow economy on Main Street was the primary concern for 23 percent of Americans, while 21 percent of respondents cited political extremism as the top issue, followed by the open border at 13 percent. On the question of who managed the economy better, Trump led Biden by ten points (40-30 percent). Trump also had a significant lead on the issue of border security, with 42 percent compared to Biden’s 25 percent.
The poll is the latest negative survey for Biden. Numerous recent polls show Biden lost support among demographics key to his 2020 victory:
- NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist: A majority of independent voters believe Biden is a greater threat to democracy than Trump.
- ABC News/Ipsos: Trump is in a dead heat with Biden among suburban women.
- USA Today/Suffolk University: Among Hispanics, Trump leads Biden by five points (39-34 percent).
- Wall Street Journal: 30 percent of black men and 11 percent of black women intend to vote for Trump.
- New York Times: Trump and Biden are essentially tied among 18-to-29-year-olds.
Biden’s allies are beginning to panic, clearly. “It should be a wake-up call,” CNN’s Van Jones said last week. “Young people are upset. And it’s not just the situation in Gaza — the economic prospects for young people are miserable.” Polling “is rightly causing panic among Democrats,” Alex Shephard of The New Republic reported. “Voters know Joe Biden—and they’ve decided that they don’t think he’s capable of doing the job of president for a second term.”
“It’s hard to see how Biden can turn around this perception of him, however,” Shephard continued. “He will not be any younger on Election Day, and there’s not a lot he can do to combat concerns about his age.”
CNN, meanwhile, is reporting on what the network’s political data guru called “very troubling” sign for the Biden campaign but a very good omen for former President Donald Trump: The latter’s support among black Americans has doubled since 2020.
“Look, if you look at 2024, Biden still leads among black voters over Donald Trump, 69% in an average of polls,” CNN’s Harry Enten said. “But look at this number for Donald Trump: 22%. Where was Donald Trump at this point? Four years ago in the poll, he was just at 9% of the vote.” (see video below)
“So he’s seen more than a doubling in his support among African-Americans,” he continued. “This margin, which was in the seventies just four years ago, look at where it is now — 69, minus 22. That puts it in the forties. My goodness gracious.”
“If this held through the general election, obviously we’re still months away, this would be by far the best performance for Republican candidate among black voters in a generation, two generations, probably since 1960 and Richard Nixon against John F. Kennedy,” he went on. “That’s how long we’re really talking about. This could be a truly historic margin. It’s quite a troubling sign for the Biden campaign.”
