Polls Suggest America Has Turned Its Back on Joe Biden

When it comes to job approval ratings, it seems Joe Biden has lost more points than the Dow Jones. Each new public opinion survey produces a lower grade for the man in the White House. With the 2024 presidential election on the distant horizon, even Democrats are wondering if their commander-in-chief is up to the job. Perhaps, at this point, the polls suggest America has turned its back on Joe Biden. According to one of the most recent surveys, a clear majority of Americans do not want Mr. Biden to run for a second term.

A Harvard CAPS–Harris Poll survey, published on July 1 by The Hill, shows that only 29% of Americans think Biden should run for re-election in 2024. A staggering 71% of respondents said the 46th president should not try for another four years in office – though perhaps the percentage is not all that staggering, given the present state of the country. The economy, after all, is almost always top of the list of concerns for Americans, come election day, and they are being hit harder now than at any time in living memory. The labor market is the only bright spot, but it is worth remembering that the country has only now just about returned to a pre-COVID level of employment. So, the Biden White House cannot even claim its record on jobs is anything of which to be proud.

What They are Saying About Biden

What drove the numbers in this poll? About a quarter of participants think it’s simply time for a change – which, of course, suggests that those who opted for this answer are, at least, unsatisfied with Biden’s performance, his manner, his results, or all of those things. About a third of the participants in the poll believe he is too old to serve a second term. Joe Biden will be 80 years old in November of this year and just a couple of weeks shy of his 82nd birthday, come election day in 2024.

But most telling is the fact that 45% of people who answered the survey think Biden is just a bad president, undeserving of another term. That is quite a collapse for the man who reportedly was elected by the most votes any presidential candidate in American history received.

It is only fair to point out that the same survey was not all that favorable of Joe Biden’s predecessor. Asked whether Donald Trump should run again in 2024, 61% of respondents said no. It is, however, noteworthy that their reasons were quite different from those who don’t want to see Biden run again. According to The Hill, 33% of those who think Trump should not seek another term said he would divide the country. That’s a rather curious reason, one could fairly observe, considering how divided the country is today – so much so that 28% of registered US voters feel so alienated from their government that they believe it might "soon be necessary to take up arms.” That figure comes from a poll conducted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, released on June 30. One in three Republican voters felt this way and one in five Democrat voters agreed.

Of those who did not want Trump to run in 2024, 36% said the 45th president was “erratic,” and 30% believed he was responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, demonstration on Capitol Hill. It seems unclear why this would be a major factor in deciding whether Trump should or should not seek office again, but the media have certainly done their best to portray the events of that day as some kind of national tragedy – and perhaps many of the survey respondents bought into the narrative.

Nevertheless, Trump still comes out on top in this survey and it seems that none of the participants thought Trump should give it up because he was, in general terms, a bad president. Rather, they either did not care for his personality, or they believe the Democrat narrative that he incited an insurrection in 2021.

Another poll, conducted on June 29 by AP-NORC and published on CNN’s website, showed that a massive 85% of US adults think the country is headed in the wrong direction. That number included 92% of Republicans and 78% of Democrats. The latter percentage is the highest for Democrats since Joe Biden took office.

Certainly, it would appear that a large majority of Americans – across the ideological divide – have had enough of Mr. Biden, which leaves the Democratic Party in a very difficult position. It seems a lot of Democrats are tiptoeing around the subject, and who can blame them? On the political battlefield, it’s not easy to let your opponents know your general is no longer fit to lead his army. But something has got to give, at some point, when each new poll suggests that a president’s chances of re-election are all but non-existent. The midterm elections are just four months away and, after that, decisions need to be made about 2024. For Joe Biden and his party, a momentous test of character, integrity, and serious self-reflection awaits.