February 11, 2022
Unlike inflation, President Biden’s approval rating is nowhere near highs not seen in decades.
A new CNN poll released Thursday finds that 58 percent disapprove of Biden’s performance in office — and 56 percent of that group say the president hasn’t accomplished anything in his first year of which they approve.
Biden’s approval rating in the survey fell to 41 percent, down from 49 percent in early December and 53 percent in late April.
The president’s disapproval rating, meanwhile, has spiked 7 percentage points from early December and 17 percentage points from early March.
What’s more, those who dislike the job Biden is doing are more impassioned than those who support him, with 41 percent of respondents strongly disapproving compared to 15 percent who strongly approve.
When respondents who disapproved of Biden’s performance were asked by pollsters to name one thing he’s done that they liked, 56 percent had nothing good to say.
”I’m hard pressed to think of a single thing he has done that benefits the country,” one respondent wrote in the survey, according to CNN.
“He’s not Donald [T]rump. That’s pretty much it,” answered another.
Of the remaining cohort members, 15 percent said they approved of Biden’s economic policies, 6 percent said they liked his response to the COVID-19 pandemic, while 4 percent of those who disapproved of the president said they admired his temperament and a further 4 percent liked his foreign policy.
The president’s approval rating among Democrats has even taken a hit, according to Thursday’s poll. It stands at 83 percent, down 11 percentage points from last summer.
Just 36 percent of independents and 9 percent of Republicans approve of Biden’s performance.
Hours before the poll results were released, the Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index jumped 7.5 percent in January over the previous year, the highest annual increase since February 1982.
That jump in the inflation rate translates to an additional $276 a month in expenses for an average American household, according to an estimate by Moody’s Analytics.
“Increases in the indexes for food, electricity and shelter were the largest contributors to the seasonally adjusted all items increase,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a statement.
The CNN poll found that 62 percent of respondents disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, up from 42 percent disapproval in late April. Just 37 percent approved of the president’s economic policies, down from 51 percent in the same late April survey.
For the first time, the poll also showed more respondents disapprove of Biden’s handling of COVID-19 (54 percent) than approve of it (45 percent). As recently as early December, those numbers were reversed, with 54 percent approving of the White House pandemic response and 45 percent disapproving.
And Biden, who campaigned on being the anti-Trump, is falling behind his predecessor.
Fifty-seven percent say they consider Biden’s administration a failure after his first year in office, compared to 55 percent who said that after Trump’s first term.
The poll surveyed 1,527 adults between Jan. 10 and Feb. 6 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
SOURCE: New York Post