Biden gets low ratings on economy, guns, immigration in AP-NORC poll
As President Joe Biden embarks on his reelection campaign, just 33% of American adults say they approve of his handling of the economy and only 24% say national economic conditions are in good shape, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Public approval of Biden’s handling of the economy remains low in a time of high inflation, a difficult housing market and concerns about a potential U.S. government debt default. American opinion is also gloomy about Biden’s efforts on gun policy and immigration, with only 31% saying they approve of the president’s performance on those hot button issues. Overall, 40% say they approve of the way Biden is doing his job, similar to where his approval rating has stood for much of the past year and a half.
Poor underperformance among Democrats
Even among Democrats, the poll finds only about half approve of his handling of immigration and gun policy. Biden underperforms on the economy even among Democrats: 61% approve of him on the issue, compared with 75% for his job overall. Democrats feel even more dour about the current condition of the nation’s economy, though they continue to be more likely than Republicans to say the country is headed in the right direction (36% vs. 7%) or to rate the economy as good (41% vs. 7%).
Some Democratic respondents who approve of the president’s performance said they felt flummoxed by life in post-pandemic America and what often seems like a total abandonment of bipartisanship in Washington.
The Biden administration oversaw two of the bigger Social Security cost-of-living adjustment in recent decades, with a 5.9% increase that took effect in 2022 and 8.7% in 2023. But Bob Vought, a retired auto parts warehouse manager in Florida said that’s not enough to keep up with a rental increase at the trailer park where he lives with his father and the rising costs of food and other basic necessities.
In the 2022 budget year, which ended in September, agents apprehended immigrants a record 2.38 million times at the southern border.
Coronavirus restrictions implemented under the former president Donald Trump, which were known as Title 42, allowed border officials to turn away migrants to help stop the spread of COVID-19. The restrictions recently
ended.
While Title 42 was used to deny asylum more than 2.8 million times, it carried no legal consequences, which encouraged repeat attempts by migrants to enter the U.S. Border Patrol agents returned to pre-pandemic immigration laws on May 11 that impose stiffer penalties on migrants who enter the U.S. without permission than the emergency health order did.
The poll of 1,680 adults was conducted May 11-15 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 3.4 percentage points.