President Joe Biden got great results in a recent Hill-HarrisX survey measuring the public’s attitudes towards his presidency. In the poll, which is the polling organization’s first such effort following Biden’s inauguration, a full 63 percent of respondents overall said that they approved of the job that Biden is doing in office. For comparison, in the FiveThirtyEight average of approval polling from across Trump’s presidency, the ex-president never even hit 50 percent, indicating that Biden already seems significantly more popular.
According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump left office with the approval of an average of a mere 38.6 percent of Americans. In the apparent final HarrisX approval survey from before Trump left office, only 44 percent of respondents overall said that they approved of Trump’s job performance, meaning that Biden has already soared past a recent accounting of Trump’s approval by almost 20 percent. In the new survey, a majority of respondents supported Biden’s work on every major issue that was presented, from the economy to the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden got his highest level of support over his handling of the pandemic, with 69 percent of respondents approving of his job performance on that particular issue. On every issue except immigration, Biden hit 60 percent approval.
Biden has already undertaken an array of critical actions while in office, from rejoining the Paris climate accord to reversing the Trump administration’s planned withdrawal from the World Health Organization. The New York Times reported that environment-focused work is on Biden’s agenda for Wednesday, when he will “create several new commissions and positions within the government focused on environmental justice and environmentally friendly job creation, including one to help displaced coal communities” and much more.
Predictably, Republicans have launched complaints about President Biden’s actions, but work is moving forward — over in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) finally relented on his demand for a pledge to preserve the filibuster, helping clear the way for the formal Democratic takeover of key Senate committees. McConnell had been blocking the formal adoption of new organization for the chamber.
The Senate is preparing to handle Trump’s second impeachment trial after the formal delivery of the House’s recently passed article of impeachment against Trump to the chamber on Monday. The House charged Trump with incitement of insurrection over his role in inciting deadly violence at the Capitol.
