WASHINGTON (AP) — Fresh off his party’s better-than-expected performance in the midterm elections, President Joe Biden faces consistent but critical assessments of his leadership and the national economy.
A new Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that 43% of American adults say they approve of how Biden handles his job as president, while 55% disapprove. It’s similar to October, just weeks before the Nov. 8 election that most Americans saw as crucial to the country’s future.
Only about a quarter say the nation is headed in the right direction or the economy is in good shape. Both measures were broadly negative during the year as inflation tightened its grip, but were more positive for much of Biden’s first year in office.
Mishana Conlee said she’s trying to be optimistic about the year ahead, but she thinks things are going down the drain because “our president is incompetent” and not mentally fit for the White House. The 44-year-old from South Bend, Indiana, said she was frustrated with increased expenses when living paycheck to paycheck as a dietary aide at a nursing home .
“The harder I work, the more I can’t advance,” Conlee said. “That’s all there is to it.”
She doesn’t blame Biden for the state of inflation, but “I feel like he’s not doing anything to change it,” said Conlee, an independent who voted for former President Donald Trump. Biden ‘does us no good’.
The Biden administration, in its second year in the White House, has relished economic growth, a string of legislative victories and relative midterm success for the president’s party. But that has yet to translate to rave reviews from a pessimistic audience.
“I don’t understand why his approval ratings are so low,” said Sarah Apwisch, 56, pointing to the administration’s investments in infrastructure and computer chip technology.
Apwisch acknowledges it’s been “a tough year” and prices are higher, but she’s hopeful because of the midterm results as a Republican-turned-Democrat who worries about the influence of the “Make America Great Again” on the GOP.
“We’re headed in the right direction,” said the Three Rivers, Michigan resident, who works for the finance department of a market research firm. She is eager to see Democrats move forward on a far-reaching agenda, including codifying abortion rights.
Even as Republicans took control of the House, Democrats defied historic precedent to delay GOP gains and even improve their Senate majority, which was cemented with a runoff victory this week for Sen. Raphael Warnock. , Georgia’s only Democrat this year to be elected statewide.
Glen McDaniel of Atlanta, who voted twice for Warnock, believes the Biden administration has moved the country forward and weathered the economic storm as best it can.
“I think this administration has done everything it can” to fight inflation, the Democrat said.
But McDaniel, a 70-year-old medical researcher, also thinks the nation faces “social headwinds” that he wants Biden and the party to prioritize.
“I think Democrats can be a little more aggressive” in legislating things like marriage equality, reproductive rights and voting reform, he said.
The poll shows that the majority of Democrats and Republicans think things in the country are on the wrong track, likely for different reasons.
But Democrats renewed their faith in Biden, boosting his overall Jobs approval rating after a summer slump. Even so, the 43% who approve in the new survey remain somewhat depressed from 48% a year ago and well below the 60% almost two years ago, a month after he took office.
Seventy-seven percent of Democrats, but only 10% of Republicans, endorse Biden.
While many Americans don’t entirely blame Biden for high inflation, this year’s AP-NORC polls showed Biden constantly being hit for his handling of the economy.
As in recent months, the new poll shows that only a quarter of American adults say economic conditions are good, while three-quarters rate them as bad. Nine in 10 Republicans, along with about 6 in 10 Democrats, say the economy is in bad shape. Ratings for the economy have deteriorated amid record inflation, even as Biden touts falling gas prices and a low unemployment rate of 3.7%.
Joshua Steffens doubts the labor market is as good as the indicators show. The 47-year-old from St. Augustine, Fla., said he’s been unemployed and struggling to find a job in information technology since September.
“Even though they try to pretend things are okay,” Steffens said, “in the trenches, it certainly doesn’t seem like it’s that accurate.”
Biden’s purchases and vacations, captured on broadcast news, are “tone deaf,” said the Republican, who called the president a “habitual liar.”
Steffens said he and his wife were experiencing increased spending on electricity and groceries, and that relying on his wife’s income had “put a strain” on their holiday shopping. He doesn’t think Biden is handling high inflation well.
“If he has policies that he’s trying to push through, then they’re not working right now,” Steffens said.
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The poll of 1,124 adults was conducted Dec. 1-5 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.
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