“Biden poll disaster” is how Drudge flags the just-released ABC News/Washington Post poll results reported here by Gary Langer (PDF with full results, charts, and tables posted here). Clicking on the story, I thrilled to the beat of the first few paragraphs.
President Joe Biden’s job approval rating is 19 points underwater, his ratings for handling the economy and immigration are at career lows. A record number of Americans say they’ve become worse off under his presidency, three-quarters say he’s too old for another term and Donald Trump is looking better in retrospect — all severe challenges for Biden in his reelection campaign ahead.
Forty-four percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’ve gotten worse off financially under Biden’s presidency, the most for any president in ABC/Post polls since 1986. Just 37% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove. Still fewer approve of Biden’s performance on the economy, 30%.
On handling immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, Biden’s rating is even lower, with 23% approval. In terms of intensity of sentiment, 20% strongly approve of his work overall, while 45% strongly disapprove. And the 74% who say he’s too old for a second term is up 6 percentage points since May. Views that Trump is too old also are up, but to 50% in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates.
This is almost funny:
Such is down-on-Biden sentiment that if a government shutdown occurs at month’s end, 40% say they’d chiefly blame him and the Democrats in Congress, versus 33% who’d pin it on the Republicans in Congress — even given the GOP infighting behind the budget impasse.
The poll results do not broach either Hunter Biden or the Biden family business. By the same token, they do not try to factor in the effects of Donald Trump’s possible convictions in any of the pending criminal cases that may be tried in the coming months.
Overall, the results simply reflect rejection of Biden and sober second thoughts about Trump in retrospect and by contrast. Regardless of what respondents think of Trump, however, they seem to have had it with Biden. If you are looking for a weekend pick-me-up, you will want to take in the whole thing.
Note on methodology: “This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Sept. 15-20, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,006 adults. Partisan divisions are 25-25-42%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points, including the design effect. Sampling error is not the only source of differences in polls. The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, with sampling and data collection by Abt Associates of Rockville, Md. See details on the survey’s methodology here.”
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