President Joe Biden may have emerged as the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race but a recent poll has shown people were disgruntled with his job as president.
What Happened: Biden’s job approval rating hit a new low of 34%, way off the 54% mark with which he started his tenure in 2021, the results of the Monmouth University poll published on Monday showed. This marked a four percentage-point decline from September.
Job approval dropped among voters of both parties. With the Democrats, Biden’s approval rating fell from 88% in July to 70%.
The poll was conducted by telephone from Nov. to Dec. 4, with 803 adults in the U.S.
As an extension, 61% of the respondents disapproved of his job as president, also a high for his tenure. Between September and December, disapproval has increased by six points.
See Also: Best Inflation Stocks
Biden Scores Poor Policy Ratings: The overall decline in job approval rating reflects poor opinion about his policy actions. About 68% disapproved of Biden’s handling of inflation as opposed to 26% who approved.
Consumer price inflation shot up to a high of 9.1% in June 2022 before pulling back, although it still remains well above the Fed’s 2% target.
Year-over-Year Change In CPI
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
“The Biden administration keeps touting their infrastructure investments and a host of positive economic indicators….but most Americans are still smarting from higher prices caused by post-pandemic inflation,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.
“There is political danger in pushing a message that basically tells people their take on their own situation is wrong,” he added.
Voters also held a markedly negative opinion about the president’s immigration policy, with 69% opposing and only 26% backing him.
A majority also disapprove of his handling of infrastructure, jobs, and climate change.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Biden said, “Inflation was 0% last month – and our economy grew by more than 5% last quarter,” crediting it to “Bidenomics.”
Apparently, the number Biden touted is the month-over-month change, which came in at 0% in October before climbing to 0.1% in November. The year-over-year rate was still at 3.1% and continued to rising prices, albeit at a slower rate than in the summer of last year.
Only 12% of the respondents said their financial situation was improving, while 44% said they were struggling to remain where they were. Also, 65% said they wish Biden would give more attention to issues that are more important to their families compared to 31% who said he was already doing it.
Former President Donald Trump got a better rating on the metric a year before the previous presidential election, Monmouth said.
Apparently, the stock market is having none of this and has rallied nicely this year. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the performance of the S&P 500 Index, has added over 25% this year.
Opinion poll results have shown that Biden trailed Trump in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup.
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