Biden Approval Now Below Every Modern President of Last 80 Years

Democrats enjoyed rubbing Trump’s face in his lackluster poll numbers, a circumstance created mostly by the media’s peddling of smears and hoaxes like the Russia-collusion lie.

In Biden’s case, the media coverage is as positive as it can be trying to cover for a White House seeing inflation soar to 40-year highs and the economy suffer while people can’t afford to put gas in their cars.

In that vein, if Biden got a fraction of the negative coverage Trump received coupled with the awful state of the country right now, what would these atrocious polls look like:

President Joe Biden finally did it. The lackluster leader’s approval rating has fallen below every president of the modern era at this stage of their term.

Citing approval polling dating back to Harry S. Truman in 1945, FiveThirtyEight said that no president has been below, or even equal to, Biden’s average of 40.9% on Day 490 of their presidency.

Former Presidents Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Gerald Ford had lower average approval ratings at some stage early in their presidencies, but Biden has caught up, and today’s average was the first for which he was below all presidents since Truman, a potentially troubling trend as Democrats ready for the midterm elections.

It was the Democrats’ favorite pollster crunching the numbers to realize this achievement from an administration that seems to be racking up points in the wrong direction:

No wonder Uncle Joe has been so grumpy lately. He’s now leading the pack with the lowest approval number at this point of his presidency among all presidents in nearly 80 years.

For comparison’s sake, here are the numbers for day 490 of a president’s first term over the last many decades:

  • Joe Biden 40.9%
  • Donald Trump 42.7%
  • Barack Obama 48%
  • George W. Bush 72%
  • Bill Clinton 50.9%
  • George H.W. Bush 65%
  • Ronald Reagan 45%
  • Jimmy Carter 43.1%
  • Gerald Ford 44.2%
  • Richard Nixon 57.1%
  • Lyndon B. Johnson 68.7%
  • John F. Kennedy 74%
  • Dwight Eisenhower 61.3%
  • Harry S. Truman 43.1%

Even Jimmy Carter was still beating Biden at this point, though his numbers probably turned worse over the last two years of his presidency. For Biden to be doing this badly just halfway into his second year should all but assure Democrats see monumental losses in November.

Biden has done nothing to help himself and somehow he’s only now realizing that. Now, 490 days into his administration after months and months of warnings and concerns over rising inflation and economic problems, only now is he paying attention.


Nate Ashworth

The Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Election Central. He's been blogging elections and politics for over a decade. He started covering the 2008 Presidential Election which turned into a full-time political blog in 2012 and 2016 that continues today.

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