Among likely voters in newly available polling from The Economist and YouGov, approval for Joe Biden’s job performance in office is at 49 percent — just one percent behind disapproval.
With just weeks until Election Day, these numbers suggest earlier trends of sharply declining public views of Biden are only further reversing. Biden and his team are presiding over positive developments for everyday Americans like a continually positive labor market, with low unemployment, while Democrats in general are pursuing broadly popular ambitions like protecting abortion rights. Biden also recently unveiled a student loan debt cancellation plan providing targeted relief to numerous Americans. Republicans predictably complained, including in sometimes bizarre terms that seemed designed to denigrate lower-income Americans, but some Republican members of Congress already saw their own businesses benefit from the sweeping loan forgiveness the government provided with Paycheck Protection Program money in connection to the pandemic. Biden extended similar opportunities to others.
Biden also recently signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which included high-profile components like the largest single investment by the U.S. government into fighting climate change in history. And what’s Trump been doing? Complaining on Truth Social while becoming the subject of only additional investigative scrutiny? Trump remains obsessed with the outcome of the 2020 presidential race and imaginary fraud he claims stole his win, but that’s not what actually boosts the fortunes of everyday Americans. Even with gas prices, costs are going down, helping stem overall inflation. Biden has also turned his attention towards shipping prices, which connect to rising costs for goods in the U.S. and the recently fast pace of inflation. In June, Biden signed a measure Bloomberg described as the “biggest change to US shipping law in two decades.”
As the outlet summarizes, the law mandates a U.S. agency called the Federal Maritime Commission “prevent ocean carriers from unreasonably refusing to fill open cargo space with US exports,” alongside other provisions. The export protections support the interests of U.S. farmers, officials noted. Meanwhile, job gains have reached the point that recently available numbers indicated manufacturing jobs passed the level seen before the pandemic, which breaks with the well-documented historical trend of U.S. manufacturing taking especially hard hits during times of economic decline. All of these developments follow Biden signing a wide-ranging infrastructure law that was poised to support the job market around the country. Even outside the context of construction and maintenance, making communities better connected helps the chances of those in these communities to find better job opportunities, so the benefits continue.
In the new poll, Biden’s approval was two percent behind his disapproval with registered voters, 47 percent of whom backed the president. A full 85 percent of those identified as Biden voters in 2020 expressed approval for his job performance, while 83 percent of Democrats did so. Overall, Biden’s approval was 43 percent, with disapproval of 49 percent. Meanwhile, only 43 percent of likely voters expressed a favorable view of Trump in the new polling from The Economist. (That’s a measure different from job approval.) A full 55 percent of likely voters shared an unfavorable perspective, putting the former president 12 percentage points behind while Biden’s job approval was just one percent down in the key voting group.
Image: Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons
