According to a new poll released Friday, President Joe Biden has a record-setting, low popularity rating, worse than the nine presidents who served in the White House before him.
Gallup's job approval rating survey looked at the 13th quarter recorded for each president since 1956, which begins on January 20 and ends on April 19. Biden's job approval rating in his 13th quarter of presidency is considered a historic low at 38.7 percent. It surpasses George H.W. Bush's previous lowest record of a 41.8 percent average job approval rating.
Among presidents elected to their first term since Dwight D. Eisenhower, Biden had the lowest average job approval rating in their thirteenth quarter. Eisenhower, on the other hand, had the highest rating of all these presidents.
The chart provided for RedState readers orders the presidents by 13th quarter popularity ranking, demonstrating that except for Obama, the presidents below a 50 percent approval threshold at this point of their first term were not successfully re-elected to a second term.
Four of the six presidents who were reelected—Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush—maintained average approval ratings between 51 and 55 percent, with Eisenhower being the outlier with a massive 73 percent average job approval rating.
Ranking | President | 13th Quarter | Avg Job Approval (%) | Reelected |
|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Eisenhower | 1956 | 73.2 | Yes |
2 | Reagan | 1984 | 54.5 | Yes |
3 | Nixon | 1972 | 53.7 | Yes |
4 | Clinton | 1996 | 53.0 | Yes |
5 | G.W. Bush | 2004 | 51.0 | Yes |
6 | Carter | 1980 | 47.7 | No |
7 | Trump | 2020 | 46.8 | No |
8 | Obama | 2012 | 45.9 | Yes |
9 | G.H.W. Bush | 1992 | 41.8 | No |
10 | Biden | 2024 | 38.7 | TBD |
Note: Gallup did not record the 13th-quarter average job approval ratings for John F. Kennedy, presumably due to his death, and Lyndon B. Johnson, presumably because he finished his predecessor’s term before getting elected.
The pollster noted several factors, including the Israel-Hamas conflict and border crisis that have contributed to the 81-year-old incumbent's low approval ratings. Additionally, rising inflation and a struggling stock market have also influenced voters' negative perceptions of Biden, according to Gallup.
The poll didn't indicate that opinions about Biden's age, mental capacities, proclivity to make up stories (perhaps about cannibals), or often appearing to be lost and confused impacted his job approval rating, while some political observers might argue those factors have ramifications as well.
In a broader historical context, Biden's most recent quarterly average places him in the bottom-12 percent among all presidential quarters recorded by Gallup since 1945, ranking 277th out of 314.
His first two quarters in the White House garnered him over 50 percent approval rate, but now he's 17 points from the record high measured during his first three months as president. While Biden's measly 38.7 percent is a new low for his presidency thus far, it is not significantly different from his prior quarter's rating of 39 percent.
Biden's dwindling favorability remains stagnant at around 40 percent and shows no signs of improving. This lack of positive change persisted even after Biden's State of the Union address in March, where he had the opportunity to showcase his administration's track record directly to the American people.
With roughly six months ahead of Election Day, Biden finds himself in a less favorable position than any previous incumbent in modern history. As the saying goes: the numbers don't lie.