Latest Biden Approval Ratings Have Democrats Smiling Wide

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In Reuters/ Ipsos polling, the percentage of Americans approving of the job President Joe Biden is doing in office rose this week to the highest level recorded since the early parts of June.

The portion of overall respondents indicating approval of Biden’s job performance hit 40 percent, a slight uptick recorded after major legislative victories for Democrats including the passage in the Senate of a sweeping initiative touching on various policy areas including climate. The bill, as approved in the chamber, contains the largest single investment by the U.S. government in fighting climate change in history. Hundreds of billions — nearly $400 billion across 10 years — were designated for tax credits supporting electric vehicles and the usage of renewable energy sources in the production of electricity. The bill also allows Medicare to negotiate the price of certain prescription medications for the first time, in addition to imposing a new cap of $2,000 a year on Medicare recipients’ prescription medication spending.

Neither of those two policy changes go into effect right away. Supporting the idea that the legislative success seen by Democratic leaders connects to Biden’s rise in approval, Democrats offered approval of the job Biden is doing at a level nine percentage points higher than the rate a month prior. In the new polling, which was finished on Tuesday, 78 percent of self-identified Democrats approved of Biden’s performance. Polling from the month before the new survey found just 69 percent of Democrats approving of Biden.

Besides the bill passed in the Senate in recent days — which the House is expected to approve before a signature from Biden in the near future — Biden also recently signed a large-scale legislative initiative featuring subsidies in support of components of the U.S. tech industry. The bill supports the U.S. production of semiconductor chips, a critical technological component used in many products. A shortage of the chips was among developments corresponding to recent price spikes. The chips bill was posed to deliver positive impacts for the U.S. job market and U.S. national security, Biden said.

Overall, economic indicators remain relatively positive — unemployment sunk in July to a level on par with the 50-year low seen before the impacts of COVID began shutting down portions of the U.S. economy, and job growth in July beat expectations by a long-shot. U.S. employers added 528,000 jobs last month according to federal data, although an Associated Press report identified an expectation from economists for the July jobs report to land at 250,000. More recently, federal data revealed inflation slightly slowed in July — overall, prices didn’t go up at all compared to the previous month, meaning June, although prices were still significantly above last year’s July prices. However, the trend isn’t immutable. Overall month-to-month inflation in June was 1.3 percent, making July’s drop a turnaround.