Politics
Biden’s Approval Rating Sinks To Record Low, Trails Trump For First Time In WSJ Poll
President Biden’s approval rating has plummeted to an all-time low, according to a new poll from the Wall Street Journal. Former President Trump also leads Biden in a hypothetical rematch for the first time in the poll’s history.
Trump leads Biden with 47 percent of the vote to 43 percent in a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, an increasingly likely possibility given Trump’s dominance in Republican primary polls. The situation is even worse for Biden when independent candidates such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West are thrown into the mix, as the president received just 31 percent of the vote compared with 37 percent for Trump.
Trump’s surge — a trend that has been observed by a number of the nation’s most reputable pollsters — comes as President Biden’s approval rating sags to a record low. Just 23 percent of respondents said Biden’s policies have helped the personally while a staggering 53 percent said they have been hurt by the president’s policies.
Former President Trump fared much better, with half of respondents saying they benefitted from Trump’s policies while just 37 percent said they were hurt by Trump’s initiatives.
2024 National GE:
Donald Trump (R) 37% (+6)
Joe Biden (D) 31%
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr (I) 8%
Joe Manchin (NL) 3%
Cornel West (I) 3%
Jill Stein (G) 2%
Lars Mapstead (L) 1%.@WSJ, 1,500 RV, 11/29-12/4https://t.co/CBp7xhdxEq
— Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) December 10, 2023
In total, just 37 percent of respondents said they approve of President Biden’s overall job performance, a new low for the WSJ poll. 61 percent of respondents, meanwhile, said they disapprove of Biden’s performance, a new high for the poll.
Trump also received higher marks on several individual issues, including the economy, border security, crime, inflation, and the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. Biden only scored higher than the former president on abortion and “setting a better tone” in politics.
“If this race is about policy and performance, then Donald Trump has a significant advantage,” Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster who conducted the poll in conjunction with Democrat Michael Bocian, said of the results. “If this race is about temperament and character, things like that, then Biden has an advantage.”
Bocian noted that Biden is struggling with groups that have traditionally voted Democrat, including African Americans and young Latino voters. “They are feeling economically stressed and challenged right now. And they are not showing enthusiasm in the way they were turning out in 2020, 2022,” he said.
The WSJ poll is the latest national survey to have Biden trailing Trump in a hypothetical rematch. Trump has led in polls from Harvard-CAPS Harris, Quinnipiac, Rasmussen, NBC News, and a number of others within the last month.
Trump currently leads Biden by 2.2 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. For comparison, Biden led by more than 8 points as of this time in 2019.
