Biden's Latest Approval Ratings Fall Below 40%

The 2022 midterms are exactly one year away, and President Biden's ratings have just taken another dip. A new USA Today/Suffolk University poll of 1,000 registered voters taken Wednesday through Friday shows that approval for Biden now stands at 38%, a drop from the low 40s he was seeing in other recent surveys, per the Hill. Vice President Harris, meanwhile, comes in with just a 28% approval rating. About half of the poll respondents said Biden has done a worse job than they'd expected he'd do—including 16% of Biden voters.

Driving the sinking numbers are independent voters, who helped put Biden over the top in the 2020 election: The poll shows 44% of them think the president isn't performing as well as they thought he would. The survey was taken before Biden's $1.2 trillion "hard" infrastructure bill passed in the House on Friday and headed toward the president's desk. A stronger-than-expected jobs report came out Friday morning, and advocates say the administration is now set for a rebound after a tough year dealing with the delta variant and criticism on the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, another poll out of Emerson College also shows the ground Biden needs to make up, per CBS Boston. According to that survey, conducted among 1,000 registered voters on Wednesday and Thursday, Biden's approval rating has seen a 20 percentage point drop among Black voters since February, with the Hispanic approval rating dipping down to 50% from 56%, and white voters dropping from 43% to 38%.

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Also emerging from that survey: Voters say that if they were casting ballots today, they'd vote for former President Trump over President Biden 45% to 43%; 11% say they'd vote for someone else, with 1% undecided. "With over a tenth of voters voicing support for someone else in another Trump-Biden matchup, 2024 could perhaps witness a third-party candidate reaching the required 15% support to get on the debate stage," says Emerson polling chief Spencer Kimball. (More President Biden stories.)