Nine months into his term as US president, Joe Biden’s approval rating has slumped to a new low. The president’s approval rating stands at just 43 per cent according to the US website FiveThirtyEight, which aggregates data from all polls.
The president’s approval 288 days after taking office is significantly lower than that of his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at the same stage in their presidencies. According to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis, Donald Trump and Gerald Ford were the only presidents since the Second World War with lower approval ratings than Biden at this point in their tenures. Neither went on to serve a second term.
Biden has struggled through a tough first year as president. The US has faced surges of Covid-19 cases, rising inflation rates, disappointing jobs figures and the global fallout from its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August. A recent poll by NBC News found that while approval of Biden’s handling of the pandemic has increased since the summer, more people are unhappy with the way he has tackled economic challenges now than they were in August.
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