In a newly released Hill-HarrisX poll, a full 60 percent of respondents overall said that they approve of the job that President Joe Biden is doing in office, which is well above where overall public approval for Trump’s job performance normally rested. At no point in his term did Trump ever surpass 50 percent overall approval in the FiveThirtyEight average of relevant surveys, and by the end of his time in office, an average of just 38.6 percent of Americans overall approved of Trump’s job performance, according to the same tally. In the new Hill-HarrisX survey, Biden sits over 20 percent ahead of Trump’s final average.
On the issue of handling the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, a full 65 percent of respondents said that they approved of Biden’s job performance in the new Hill-HarrisX poll. On every issue, Biden had the approval of at least 50 percent of respondents. The closest he came was on the issue of immigration — 54 percent of respondents overall said that they approved of Biden’s handling of the issue, and 46 percent said that they disapproved. Even this level of support still surpasses Trump’s average level of overall approval among the general population throughout his time in office.
As of Friday afternoon, FiveThirtyEight reported that an average of 54.4 percent of Americans overall said that they approve of Biden’s job performance, while 37.2 percent said the opposite. (FiveThirtyEight’s averages, it’s worth noting, “[account] for each poll’s quality, recency, sample size and partisan lean,” they say. Thus, the numbers are weighted averages based on the data.)
While in office, Biden has already gotten to work on a number of high-profile policy areas, like rolling back the Trump administration’s destructive approach to environmental protection issues and getting COVID-19 relief to Americans. This proposed relief package, which is working its way through Congress (and will likely re-emerge as an immediate priority after the imminent conclusion of ex-President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial), enjoys broad public support. In a recent Quinnipiac University survey, almost 70 percent of respondents overall said that they supported the $1.9 trillion relief proposal put forward by the Biden administration. This relief proposal includes increased unemployment assistance, money for vaccine distribution, direct payments to many Americans, and more.
