Joe Biden Rockets Past GOP In Latest Public Approval Polling

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A new Hill/ HarrisX survey reveals support for President Joe Biden’s overall job performance from a full 61 percent of respondents, which is dramatically higher than the average levels of support that Donald Trump got while in office. Trump left office with overall approval from an average of under 40 percent of Americans, and according to FiveThirtyEight’s weighted average of poll results from across his term, Trump never even hit an average of 50 percent overall approval at any point of his presidency.

Out of seven individual policy areas that the Hill/ HarrisX survey asked respondents about, Biden got support from a majority of respondents on all but one: immigration. Even on that issue, he was close, with 49 percent of overall respondents expressing approval for his handling of the topic and 51 percent expressing disapproval. Recently, Republican leaders have run with increasing levels of migration at the southern border and tried to use the situation to depict Biden’s administration as fundamentally threatening the country.

As for other issues, Biden got the support of 60 percent of respondents for his handling of the economy, 58 percent on stimulating job growth, 58 percent on combating terrorism, 57 percent on handling foreign affairs, 60 percent on dealing with governmental administration, and 67 percent on tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. On a note similar to that last number, Biden’s COVID-19 economic relief package has repeatedly garnered high levels of support in polling. In a Gallup survey from last month, the package got the support of 63 percent of respondents, and on other occasions, overall support has hit 70 percent.

These high levels of support for Biden and his agenda suggest that Democrats could fare well in the upcoming midterm elections, when control of both houses of Congress will be at stake, although there’s still considerable time to go until the elections unfold. Ahead of the midterms, Republican state legislators in states like Georgia and Iowa have rolled out — and enacted — tough new election restrictions. In Iowa, authorities even slashed an hour from the time that polling places will be open on Election Day, which seems unmistakably punitive. Republicans have moved forward with these restrictions despite the fact that no systematic security issues were discovered during the 2020 cycle.