President Joe Biden, who apparently won the Oval Office with around 80 million votes, is less popular among voters than the evil “orange man bad” Donald Trump, according to a Rasmussen poll. And, each month, Americans are liking the commander in chief less and less. A Gallup poll taken from July 6-21 showed that Biden lost another six points since June with only a 50% approval rating, while the Rasmussen study conducted July 21-22 gave him a 51% favorable opinion compared to Trump’s 52%.
The online and telephone Rasmussen report of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters revealed that 48% view the current president unfavorably, with 39% who have a very unfavorable opinion of him. Trump’s numbers are close with 46% of those surveyed holding an unfavorable opinion of the former president, including 38% whose opinion is very unfavorable.
Barack Obama is beating Trump and Biden in overall voter approval rates and as the report explained:
“Comparing voter opinions of Biden and his two predecessors across demographic categories, the current president suffers from more intense disapproval by Republicans, and doesn’t have the kind of strong support from black voters that benefitted Obama.”
When it comes to black voters, 57% had a very favorable opinion of Obama, though Biden received only 45%. “Perhaps more significantly,” the report explained, “the percentage of black voters who have a very unfavorable view of Biden (19 percent) is more than twice as large as the number of black voters whose opinion of Obama is very unfavorable (9 percent).” Along the Party lines, 83% of Democrats view Biden favorably as well as 27% of Republicans and 47% unaffiliated voters. For Trump, 84% of the Republicans surveyed, 27% of Democrats, and 47% of unaffiliated voters view him favorably. Obama’s numbers in the favorable column are similar with 83% Democrats, 27% Republicans, and 51% unaffiliated voters.
As with many things, the age of the voter is a factor in presidential popularity. Those under the age of 40 are more likely to hold a very favorable opinion of Obama (35%) than of the current president (25%). The older set, 65 and above, tend to favor Trump (41%) over Biden’s 36% or Obama’s 34%.
There are a number of factors to help explain Biden’s popularity decline. Rasmussen pointed out that “While most voters approve of President Joe Biden’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, they give former President Donald Trump more credit for the coronavirus vaccine program.” The country’s economy and growing inflation have many concerned about the near and far future. Failure to reach a bipartisan infrastructure agreement could be damaging his popularity as well as the border crisis and the White House’s attempt to monitor Facebook for any posts it defines as “misinformation.”
The survey has a margin of sampling error of +/-3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence according to Rasmussen.
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Read more from Kelli Ballard.
