President Joe Biden, 81, holds the worst net approval rating in history at this time in office, 1,080 days into his tenure, FiveThirtyEight polling found this week, highlighting just how unpopular Biden is going into a presidential election just ten months away.
The following is the net approval rating of previous presidents in the modern era at the same time of their presidencies:
- Biden: -17.2 points
- Trump: -11.8 points
- Obama: -0.6 points
- Carter: +9.6 points
- Clinton: +11.2 points
- H.W. Bush: +12.5 points
- Nixon: +14.6 points
- Reagan: +15.3 points
- Truman: +16.7 points
- G.W. Bush: +20.3 points
- Eisenhower: +62.6 points
Biden’s approval rating stands in the mid-thirties, while his disapproval rating is the mid-fifties, FiveThirtyEight found:
Biden’s popularity never recovered after he directed the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021. Soaring inflation after massive post-pandemic spending, low consumer sentiment, and draconian coronavirus mandates kept his approval numbers poor throughout 2022 and 2023.
As Biden looks to rebound heading into 2024, he will need to dramatically reverse course to improve 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,” Madison Hall wrote in December at Business Insider.
Biden’s top five worse polls in 2023 are here.
Follow Wendell Husebø on “X” @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.