Biden approval rating plummets to 39%, down 24 points from last year: AP poll

President Joe Biden’s approval rating has plummeted in May to its lowest point since he took office, according to a poll commissioned by the Associated Press.

The poll, published by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public research, shows that only 39% of adults in the United States approve of Biden’s performance as president.

Overall, only about 2 in 10 adults say the U.S. is heading in the right direction or the economy is good, both down from about 3 in 10 a month earlier. Those drops were concentrated among Democrats, with just 33% within the president’s party saying the country is headed in the right direction, down from 49% in April.

Biden’s overall approval among Democrats sits at 73% which represents a drop from 82% in the same poll last year. Biden never dropped below 82% approval among Democrats in 2021.

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Last year, the same Associated Press poll showed Biden with an approval rating of 63%, 24 points higher than his approval rating today.

Biden’s handling of the economy, according to the poll, is one of the largest reasons for the underwater polling, with two-thirds of Americans saying they disapprove of the way he has presided over that situation.

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Additionally, only 18% of Americans say that Biden’s policies have helped more than they have hurt the economy, which is down from 24% in March. Meanwhile, 51% of Americans say his policies have hurt more than they have helped with 30% saying he hasn’t made a difference one way or the other. 

The majority of Americans also disapprove with Biden’s handling of several other issues including the war in Ukraine, the United States’ relationship with Russia and immigration.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,172 adults was conducted May 12-16 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

Biden’s lackluster polling has become a trend since January with several polls showing that Americans across the political spectrum are dissatisfied over issues ranging from record high gas prices and historic inflation to a nationwide baby formula shortage. 

Biden’s polling numbers have suffered a hit even from constituencies that have historically been reliable for Democrats, a trend evident in a Quinnipiac poll this week showing that the president’s approval rating with Hispanics has fallen to 26%.

The same Quinnipiac poll conducted last year put Hispanic support for Biden at 55%.

A Fox News poll earlier this month showed that Biden’s sagging poll numbers are also reflected in projections for how Democrats will fare in the upcoming midterms.

Americans appear ready to oust the incumbent party in this fall’s elections, with 39% favoring the Democratic candidate in their House district and 46% backing the Republican, if voting today.  

That 7-point advantage is up from 2 points last month and is the largest Republicans have held this year.  Fox News models suggest this would be a 44-seat swing in the House and an 11-seat swing in the Senate.

“The congressional ballot numbers are highly correlated with changes in the partisan distribution of seats,” says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll with Democratic pollster Chris Anderson. “They may bounce around quite a bit in the next few months, but if we see a 7-point Republican advantage in the national vote this fall, we’re going to see a wave election for the GOP.”  

Associated Press contributed to this report