Biden’s Free Fall Continues

It was possible to dismiss the ABC News/Washington Post poll a couple weeks back that had dismal numbers for Joe Biden as an outlier, but then the Harvard/Harris poll reported similar dismal results for Biden. And now CNN joins the pile on, with a poll showing Biden’s approval rating continuing to slump all the way down to 35 percent.

President Joe Biden’s bid for a second term begins with a wide advantage over his declared opponents for the Democratic nomination, but he faces headwinds among the overall public from declining favorability and a widespread view that his reelection would be more negative than positive for the country, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

Just a third of Americans say that Biden winning in 2024 would be a step forward or a triumph for the country (33%). At the same time, the survey finds a decline in favorable views of Biden over the past six months, from 42% in December to 35% now. And results from the same poll released earlier this week showed Biden’s approval rating for handling the presidency at 40%, among the lowest for any first-term president since Dwight Eisenhower at this point in their term.

These look like the kind of weak numbers President George H.W. Bush showed before Pat Buchanan stunned Bush with 40 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary in 1992.

I’m going long on hair gel futures.

Chaser, also from the CNN poll:

Views of Biden are sharply more negative than are views of each of the three living Democratic past presidents. Barack Obama is the most positively viewed of all the living presidents tested in the poll, 57% hold a favorable view, 35% an unfavorable one. Impressions of 98-year-old Jimmy Carter, who recently entered hospice care, break positive, 43% favorable to 21% unfavorable, with 36% unsure or unable to rate him. And the public divides over Bill Clinton, with 41% expressing a favorable view and 42% an unfavorable one.

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