President Joe Biden and some of his key policy proposals garnered high levels of support in new public approval polling from POLITICO and Morning Consult.
Overall, 59 percent of respondents said that they approve of the job that Biden is doing as president, which is yet again far above the levels of overall public approval that Donald Trump got during his term. With only 37 percent of respondents saying that they disapprove of Biden in the new survey, the numbers are roughly flipped from the Trump era. The ex-president left office with average overall approval at less than 40 percent and average overall disapproval at about 58 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted tabulations.
The new POLITICO/ Morning Consult polling also found majority support among Democrats, Republicans, and independents for half a dozen major pillars of a wide-ranging infrastructure spending package that the Biden team recently proposed. For instance, a full 78 percent of Republican respondents said that they support modernizing veterans’ hospitals, and a full 71 percent of the same group of GOP’ers said that they back updates to roadways throughout the United States.
Notably, 64 percent of Republican respondents also backed support for caregiving for elderly and disabled people. Recently, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) tried to cast $400 billion in elder care spending that’s a part of the Biden team’s infrastructure proposal as a bad thing, earning widespread ridicule. Apparently, even many Republican voters don’t agree with Blackburn’s perspective. Health care for seniors and others in need is a critical part of any plan to modernize the foundational work that is necessary to keep the United States moving along.
One thing I've been worried about is that the Biden team is cramming so much popular stuff into its bills that it might be hard to get the message out, it's nice of Senate Republicans to help out. https://t.co/4V0fM8jvSW
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 7, 2021
Biden and his policies have earned high levels of support in other polling. His COVID-19 economic relief plan, for instance, which he signed into law earlier this year, has repeatedly hit 70 percent overall public approval among Americans. Overall, Biden has the approval of about 53 percent of Americans, according to a weighted average from FiveThirtyEight, with about 41 percent in opposition. Soon, the midterm elections will help decide who controls Congress for the following two years, and Biden’s personal popularity could help propel Democrats to victory and the retention of their current slim Congressional control.
