A year ago this month, when President Joe Biden was sworn into office, he had poll numbers that he and his allies could surely tout. Now, however, the president's poll numbers are quite foreboding for him and the entire Democratic Party going into 2022. It happened rather quickly, too, as polls have been less than kind to Biden for months now. While speaking with Fox News' Trace Gallagher, columnist Marc Thiessen mentioned that "no president in my lifetime or probably American history has fallen from grace so far, so fast like Joe Biden."
Thiessen was indeed talking about Biden's poll numbers, which he expanded upon further. "He started out with 56% approval rating. Today he is 10 points underwater, a 30-point slide in one year. No other president has fallen that far that fast," Thiessen explained.
Indeed, we've been covering for some time at Townhall how Biden's poll ratings have been catastrophic.
They're usually easy to track over time through RealClearPolitics (RCP) and FiveThirtyEight.
The RCP average for Biden from polls spanning December 11-December 30 show a 43.1 percent approval rating and a 53.3 percent disapproval rating. In the earliest days of his presidency, though, polls had Biden in the high 50s and his disapproval rating in the high 20s to mid 30s, with a poll from The Hill/HarrisX even showing him with a 63 percent approval rating.
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FiveThirtyEight, whose approval tracker was last updated on December 31, has Biden facing a 51.6 percent disapproval rating and a 43.3 percent approval rating. On January 23, they had him at 53.0 percent approval and 36.0 disapproval.
Gallup also recently did a roundup reviewing their polls on Biden. His latest approval rating is at 43 percent, according to the December 1-16 poll, with his highest having been at 57 percent in the January 21-February 2 and April 1-21 polls. His lowest approval rating was at 42 percent, for the October 1-19 and November 1-16, polls.
The average for presidents in their fourth quarter, though, from Eisenhower to Biden, is at 53 percent. Only former President Donald Trump, with his 36 percent in December 2017, was lower than Biden.
Perhaps one of the most concerning takeaways of all from the poll, though, is that Biden is facing the support of 21 percent less of Independents (from 61 to 40 percent approval rating) and 20 percent less of Democrats (from 98 to 78 percent) in December 2021 than he did in January 2021.
Gallup had conducted a poll in October that at the time noted his "decline is larger than any prior president registered between his first and third quarters."
When Biden's approval numbers started to go down, his allies in the mainstream media still continued to cover for him. As I highlighted in a VIP piece from April, NBC's Chuck Todd fawned over Biden's "really solid" poll numbers and said his 53 percent approval rating from an NBC/Wall Street Journal April poll were "the new 60."
By the summer, Biden was reaching his new personal low, and it looked that way month after month with each subsequent poll across various pollsters. He's also been underwater with Independents for several months now, a group that was key to getting him elected in 2020.
The Fox News segment also examined how Biden's ratings have soured when it comes to how Americans think he is handling the pandemic. As Thiessen further pointed out, "his poll numbers are underwater on every single topic."
How respondents feel about this topic is still particularly relevant, as it's been Biden's most popular issue. Yet the gap is closing.
Gallagher referenced an ABC News/IPSOS poll from December showing that the president is "absolutely tanking," considering it is now a rather small majority who approve of Biden's handling of COVID, at 53 percent approving compared to 47 percent who disapprove. In March, 72 percent approved while 28 percent disapproved.
The segment also discussed Thiessen's columns for The Washington Post highlighting Biden's top 10 best and 10 worst things he did for the year. "Winnowing down the worst list to just 10 was literally one of the hardest journalistic challenges I've ever faced," Thiessen said.
