President Joe Biden arrives for a meeting of his National Infrastructure Advisory Council in the Indian Treaty Room of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on December 13, 2023, in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
President Joe Biden’s current approval rating is not where he and his campaign want it to be.His approval ratings are historically bad, worse than any president since at least 1945.With less than a year to go until the election, he needs to turn it around — and quick.
President Joe Biden’s polling at the moment is in a rough spot.
And not in an, “Oh he just needs a good month on the campaign trail to get back on the right track,” kind of way.
The president’s current polling should be giving the Democratic Party immense reason to worry and creating an existential crisis to those working on his campaign.
According to the latest Monmouth University Poll conducted between November 30 to December 4, at 34%, Biden’s approval rating is at an all-time low. Several other major polls have shown Biden trailing by several percentage points in a hypothetical rematch against Trump in 2024.
Though the majority of the respondents to the Monmouth poll said they disapproved of Biden’s handling of every policy area they were asked about, two in particular stuck out the most: his administration’s response to “inflation” and “immigration,” where nearly 70% of respondents disapproved of the 46th president.
How does he stack up against past presidents?
Biden’s approval ratings aren’t just in a sorry state — they’re historically awful.
Using FiveThirtyEight’s catalog of American support for past presidents, at 1,063 days into their presidencies, Biden has the lowest average approval rating of any president since former President Harry S. Truman, who was sworn in in 1945.
FiveThirtyEight
That includes former President Donald Trump, who was impeached by the House on this day four years ago for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
Despite the impeachment — and the January 6, 2021, attempted insurrection that’s since led to him getting federally indicted in Washington, DC — Trump’s average approval rating never once dropped below where Biden’s currently is.
What do Biden and his campaign do now?
At the moment, it certainly seems like Biden’s in a political pickle.
As war continues to rage in Gaza following Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, a recent New York Times/Siena Poll reveals that a majority of registered voters — 57% — either somewhat or strongly disapprove of the way he’s handled the conflict.
At the beginning of the war between Israeli forces and Hamas, Biden wholeheartedly expressed his sympathy and support for Israel, pledging he’d do his best to send a support package to the country’s military with congressional approval.
Biden’s State Department ultimately went around Congress earlier in December to approve a sale of $106 million worth of tank ammunition to Israel.
President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv on October 18, 2023.
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Since October 7, Israel’s killed more than 18,000 Palestinians, according to reports from the Gaza Health Ministry, including thousands of women and children. In December, Biden privately told donors he felt that Israel’s “indiscriminate” bombings needed to change.
Nevertheless, if Biden does change his public support for Israel’s ongoing wartime campaign, he’ll rankle a chunk of his base without guaranteeing he can ever regain the trust of many swing-state Muslim voters who’ve already pledged to ditch their support for Biden, the candidate.
Additionally, it looks like the only way for Congress — and Biden as well — to provide any additional wartime funding to Ukraine is to package it alongside legislation regarding border security.
While Biden appears to want to find some form of compromise, several congressional Democrats have said they’re unwilling to back the immigration-related proposals presented by their Republican colleagues that would make it easier to deport people and harder to legally immigrate.
As polls have shown, American voters want Biden to change course on his immigration policies, but doing so would also alienate much of his base and Democratic colleagues at the same time.
To make matters even more complicated, House Republicans recently approved an impeachment inquiry into Biden around the same time Biden’s younger son, Hunter, was federally indicted for alleged tax evasion.
With less than a year until the presidential election, it’s rapidly become clear that both Biden and his campaign need to make a drastic change and revitalize his image to increase his popularity.
And if he can’t get his approval ratings up — and quick — then he and the Democratic Party need to have a serious conversation about replacing him on the Democratic ticket in the 2024 presidential race.