In new polling conducted by YouGov for The Economist, President Joe Biden’s level of approval among registered voters is only two percentage points behind his level of disapproval.
A full 47 percent of respondents in that category indicated approval for Biden’s job performance, while 49 percent shared disapproval. The overall levels — including those registered to vote and who hadn’t made that move — had approval for Biden’s job performance at 43 percent and disapproval at 48 percent. Overall, Biden’s approval led his disapproval among Black respondents, those under the age of 45, and urban residents. Huge portions of those who reported voting for Biden in 2020 also stuck with him. In that group, 81 percent indicated approval for Biden’s work in the White House. The average maintained by the elections data and analysis site FiveThirtyEight shows Biden’s overall level of approval up by nearly six percentage points since July of 2022. Presently, it’s at 43.2 percent, but on July 21 of this year it hit 37.5 percent.
These results and improvements in Biden’s overall standing obviously carry generally positive signs for his planned run for re-election. Biden could end up facing Donald Trump in the general election yet again, but it’s not a sure thing at this stage that the former president will even win the Republican presidential primary. The possibility of Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis running for the nod threatens to stop Trump’s ambition of returning to presidential power.
Just in terms of election results, DeSantis is excelling. He recently won his race for re-election by a margin of nearly 20 percentage points after first prevailing in a general election in the race for governor by less than half a percent. And Trump? Candidates he endorsed losing and kept losing in races nationwide during this year’s recently concluded midterm elections. In seven high-profile contests where his Save America PAC spent money, Trump’s candidates lost in six. (The only exception was the Ohio Senate race.) In the five most competitive House races (as determined by the Cook Political Report) where Trump made endorsements, his candidates all lost.
As for Biden, positive signs continue. Average gas prices remain on a downward trend, the rate of inflation in both one-year and month-to-month measurements is sinking according to federal metrics from both the Commerce and Labor Departments, and a federal measurement from the Commerce Department shows wages rising faster last month compared to October than prices rose, meaning the spending power some Americans saw outpaced inflation. Delays at ports are shrinking, and prices — at least those not subject to contract requirements — for shipping routes from Asia to the West Coast are way down to what recent data indicated was an average slightly below a 2019 level. The rate of increase in rent costs at new rentals is also sinking, numbers show.
Image: Gage Skidmore/ Creative Commons
