BROOKLYN WEATHER

President Biden’s Approval Ratings Plummet to Lowest Numbers of His First Year in Office

President Biden’s Approval Ratings Plummet to Lowest Numbers of His First Year in Office

By Yehudit Garmaise

In President Joe Biden’s first few months in office, a majority of Americans, 57%, approved of the job he was doing, however, a year later, a new Gallup poll reports that number to have sharply dropped to 40%, which is not only his lowest to date, but one of the lowest approval ratings of any American president’s first year in office since 1953.

Since the end of World War II, only former President Donald Trump, to whom only 38.4% of Americans gave their thumbs up in his first year in office in 2017, has had a lower approval rating.

The low approval ratings of presidents, however, may be more attributable to Americans’ increasing critical eye toward politicians, and not necessarily politicians’ actual performance, Gallup acknowledged.

In 1961, for instance, when media outlets rarely reported anything negative about politicians, and especially presidents, former President John F. Kennedy received the highest approval rating in recent history, when 76.4% Americans said he was doing a great job.

While even Democrats' approval of President Biden has slipped from 90% to 80% in the last year, Republicans’ approval of Biden typically has stayed below 10%, Gallup reported. 

The Americans who have shown the largest drop in approval for Biden are Independents, who among whom only 33% approve of the president, compared with ratings of 50% or higher during his first six months of his presidency.

Gallup has measured Biden's job approval ratings 13 times throughout his first year as president, and while the president’s approval ratings ranged between 54% and 57% from January to June 2021, which may have been tied to rising vaccination rates and dropping COVID rates, public support for the president started to drop in July, when the Delta variant started to cause a summer surge in COVID infections nationwide. 

In late August 2021 when the U.S. struggled through a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan, and a terrorist attack at the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. troops, Biden’s approval rating plummeted, and has not recovered.

Some reasons Americans give for their disapproval of the president are the highest rates of price inflation the country has seen in 40 years and another surge of COVID-19 cases: fueled by the Omicron variant.

On Jan. 13, the US Supreme Court disallowed President Biden’s vaccine mandate for businesses that employ 100 employees or more, however, many Americans continue to feel that the president’s efforts to stop the spread of the COVID virus encroach on their “personal freedoms.”

Other Americans worry about who will end up paying for President Biden’s outsize spending packages, such as his massive $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan, which focuses on combatting climate change and is currently stalled in the Senate.

Biden tries to get through his “Build Back Better” plan that focuses on combating just two months after signing the $1.2 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

In early March, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, a sweeping $1.9 trillion package, that stimulus payments, boosts to weekly jobless benefits, an expansion of the child tax credit, and $350 billion in state and local aid.

Although many Democratic politicians thrill at the windfall their jurisdictions have received from Biden’s provisions, many Republicans worry about increases in future taxes and the national deficit and survival programs in which many Americans have already invested, such as Medicare.

In May 2021, as Biden continued to push bills that cost unprecedented amounts of money, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), famously said, “Please G-d, don’t tell the Democrats what comes after ‘trillion.’”


FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro, who had Wanted to Stay On, Announces Retirement
  • Jan 21 2022
  • |
  • 1:48 PM

Photo Gallery: Uvos Ibunim in Beis Medrash Belz 43
  • Jan 22 2022
  • |
  • 7:32 PM

Be in the know

receive BoroPark24’s news & updates on whatsapp

 Start Now