Tipsheet

Here's What 'Surprised' NBC's Pollsters in Latest Survey

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  November 20, 2023 3:00 PM

President Biden’s approval rating, now at 40 percent, has hit an all-time low in a recent NBC News survey, just one of the poor marks the president received in the poll. 

NBC's Steve Kornacki pointed out how Democrats play a key role in this figure. 

"If you take a look here by party, I think it’s significant for two reasons: one, Independents, obviously, more than two to one disapprove. You don’t want to be there as an incumbent president. But I think equally significant, no surprise, 7 percent of Republicans approve of Joe Biden's job performance, but three times as many Democrats, 21 percent, that’s more than one in five, say they disapprove. You need much more unified support in your own party if you're going to have a successful reelection campaign. And we mentioned the drop in that approval rating and the connection to the Middle East and here it is. On foreign policy, 33 percent approve of Joe Biden's job performance."

NBC “Meet the Press” host Kristin Welker noted that even their own pollsters were "surprised" by these numbers, "with one saying he cannot remember a time when a foreign entanglement that didn't involve U.S. troops had the capacity to transform the electorate. And that's not the case in this poll."  

The two also discussed the survey's finding in a hypothetical matchup, where former President Donald Trump was ahead of Biden, 46 to 44 percent.

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"This is significant because this is the first time in the history of our poll that former President Trump beats President Biden, still within the margin of error, but still significant," Welker said.

"Yeah, in 2019, 2020 when Trump was president he trailed all of them. This year he's trailed all of them in our poll. First time in more than a dozen polls we've seen a result like this," Kornacki added.