Approval among members of the public for the job that Joe Biden is doing as president is particularly high in a new set of polling from NPR and PBS NewsHour that was conducted by Marist College.
In the survey, a full 49 percent of registered voters among the poll’s respondents said they approved of Biden’s job performance, while only 45 percent said they disapproved. It has recently been rare for Biden’s level of approval to be ahead of his level of disapproval in polling of this sort. Among those approving of how Biden is handling his role, about half said they strongly approved while the others indicated they simply approved. The total out of the entire group indicating they strongly approved was 23 percent. In this polling, Biden’s level of approval among women identified as from either a small city or the suburbs — a demographic group often targeted — was 50 percent, and his disapproval among those respondents was only 42 percent, meaning that’s the portion of the total that expressed that perspective.
These numbers obviously provide relatively positive signs for how the Dems will fare in the 2024 elections, with Biden expected to run for another term and Trump potentially on the ballot against him for the general election for a second time. Among overall adults, the general approval for Biden’s job performance in this latest polling was the highest since last March, when he briefly reached 47 percent. In the intervening period, it went down as low as just 36 percent in July 2022. (Overall, the approval and disapproval for Biden among overall respondents — not just registered voters — were even in the latest polling, at 46 percent in each group.)
Since that period, the U.S. has seen a series of positive economic signs, including overall declines in gas prices and steady drops in the rate of inflation. Inflation has been a problem across economies in the so-called G-20 group of nations, and sometimes, the U.S. has beat the rate seen across those economies. Jumps in price are simply not just a problem somehow created by the Biden administration.
In January, the overall rate of inflation when comparing prices only to the prior month jumped slightly, but the rate of increase compared to costs in the same month from the prior year slightly dropped. Elsewhere, federal numbers showed a large increase in the number of jobs added across the economy in January, roughly doubling the number of jobs added in December 2022. The federal Commerce Department, whose inflation data has also showed drops, will be releasing a new set of numbers on inflation in January this coming Friday. (The other figures, which are released earlier, are from the federal Labor Department.)
