By
Eli Yokley
January 19, 2022 at 6:00 am ET
Joe Biden is entering his second year in office with the worst job approval rating yet, according to new Morning Consult/Politico polling, driven by increasingly tepid support among Democrats that comes as his agenda remains stalled on Capitol Hill. However, voters are still slightly more likely to give the Oval Office’s current occupant better grades than they gave his predecessor at the same point four years ago.
That 15-point drop in Biden’s strong approval among Democrats came as America struggled with the highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 and rising prices that appear to be drowning out more positive economic indicators such as jobs, wages and unemployment. It also came as the White House’s signature legislative package, the Build Back Better Act, was put on ice by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
The president’s impassioned but apparently ineffective push last week for Congress to change its rules and pass voting rights legislation, a popular proposal among Democratic voters, also laid bare the divisions within the party’s elected officials. That appears to be reflected in the recent softening of the president’s standing with the Democratic base, and serves as the driving factor in his recent declines among the overall electorate, which has left him less popular today than former President Donald Trump was at this time four years ago. In a January 2018 poll, 45 percent of voters approved of Trump’s job performance and 50 percent disapproved.
Still, when it comes to perceptions of each president’s handling of a range of issues during their first year, voters are slightly more likely to give Biden better grades than his predecessor.
The latest poll was conducted Jan. 15-16, 2022, among a representative sample of 2,005 registered voters, with an unweighted margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.