Americans may have found something they like less than a hypothetical Kamala Harris presidency — four more years of Joe Biden.
A new poll on Monday showed the veep’s advantage rating rising above the commander-in-chief for the first time, as reports indicated growing concern inside the White House about Biden’s prospects in 2024.
A Monmouth University poll showed the 81-year-old Biden receiving just a 34% approval rating — the lowest in poll tracking of his administration and down 20 percentage points from his peak in April 2021 — and a 61% disapproval rating.
Harris fares slightly better, but his 35% approval rating and 57% disapproval rating are shining positives over his boss.
Most troubling for Biden’s re-election campaign is his 24% approval rating among independents, down 14 points from July.
In addition, more than two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of the twin crises that have plagued his administration: immigration (69%) and inflation (68%).
Kamala Harris is now more popular than President Biden, according to polls. AP
“The Biden administration continues to tout their infrastructure investments and various positive economic indicators,” said Patrick Murray of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “That data point may be fact, but most Americans are still smarting from higher prices caused by post-pandemic inflation. This seems to be what drives public opinion. There is a political danger in pushing a message that essentially tells people that their view of the situation they themselves are wrong.”
The poll included criticism of the president’s campaign message that life is getting better for Americans thanks to “Bidenomics” — with 69% feeling that the country is on the wrong track and only 20% believing that things are heading in the right direction .
Joe Biden’s approval rating continues to fall.
In public, Biden easily shrugged off his dismal numbers, especially in a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 contest against Republican rival Donald Trump.
However, reports suggest a different story behind closed doors.
President Biden puts on a happy face about his 2024 prospects, but behind the scenes, he reportedly has some concerns. AP
“You don’t read the polls,” the president told reporters Nov. 9. “I’ll give you 10 polls, eight of which I beat him [Trump] in those states. Eight of them. You only make two.”
Eleven days later, following the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardon, Biden complained to his closest aides during a meeting that his poll numbers were too low and he wanted to know what was being done about it, the Washington Post reported on Monday.
The outlet added that the president and first lady Jill Biden were recently “dismayed” by the lack of improvement in Biden’s position. The Monmouth poll did not look at the Trump-Biden matchup, but the RealClearPolitics polling average showed the 45th president leading his successor by 3.5 percentage points in the popular vote on Monday.
That bad feeling has spread to other Democrats, with the party trying to retake the House of Representatives next year and expand its majority in the Senate despite an unfavorable map.
Donald Trump has been ahead of President Biden in several recent polls. Getty Images
In Michigan, for example, Rep. Democrat Elissa Slotkin has told allies she worries she won’t win the state’s open Senate seat if Biden is on the ticket, the Washington Post added.
There have even been times when Biden himself has expressed clear doubts about seeking a second term.
“If Trump didn’t run, I’m not sure I would,” he said at a fundraiser near Boston earlier this month, before adding: “We can’t let him win.”
The next day, Biden told reporters that “maybe 50” Democrats could defeat the 77-year-old Trump before insisting “I have to run” and vowing not to leave the race if Trump somehow drops out.
Part of the issue seems to be the focus of the administration. In the Monmouth poll, only 31% said Biden paid enough attention to the issues most important to them and their families, while 65% said he did not.
“We’re not where we want to be,” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg told the Washington Post. “Some of our alliance wandered off and we need to get them back.”
Voters have expressed some concern about President Biden’s age. At the age of 81, he is already the oldest president in US history. Getty Images
“I think a lot of activists feel that everyone they know is happy with the president,” added former Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.). “They do not understand who in the majority of the country is dissatisfied and what needs to be done to change their minds.
“A lot of us are looking to the campaign for leadership about how we’re going to get through this together and what role they need us to play.”
Biden’s allies tried to do just that in early November, laying out their game plan in a Sheraton conference room in Chicago.
Instead of being reassured, many of those in attendance — including allies of two of Barack Obama’s campaigns — were surprised by the presentation’s lack of detail and substance, New York Magazine reported.
Former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod has been a leading pessimist, describing Biden’s poll numbers as “very, very dark,” and giving the president a 50-50 chance, at best, of re-election.
The president has publicly downplayed the vote. AP
Biden allies, led by former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, have warned that Democrats looking to defeat Trump will have no choice but to go with the incumbent next year.
They have also taken a lull in their fundraising — which is expected to hit their $67 million goal for the final quarter of the year, according to the Washington Post — and a string of off-year election victories for Democrats in Kentucky, New Jersey and Virginia.
“Time and time again, Biden has exceeded expectations. Happening in 2020, happening in 2022, happening on Tuesday night,” communications director Michael Tyler told reporters at the time.
“You see days, weeks, months of wild predictions about how bad things are going to be for Joe Biden,” he added, “followed by election day with a historic victory.”
The Monmouth University poll polled 803 adults from Nov. 30 to Dec. 4 and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.8 percentage points.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
