Joe Biden: His popularity plummets ahead of his State of the Nation address

The popularity of the US president remains near the lowest level of his tenure Joe Biden a few hours before his State of the Nation address, according to an Ipsos poll on behalf of the Reuters agency, which was published today.

According with the findings of the three-day investigation, 41% of Americans approve of President Biden’s job, up one point from a Reuters/Ipsos poll three weeks ago.

In the same poll, 65% of respondents expressed the belief that the country is going in the wrong direction. Last year this percentage was 58%.

Faced with the Covid-19 health crisis and soaring inflation, President Biden entered 2023 buoyed by positive midterm election results for Democrats and signs of easing inflationary pressures. On the other side, came under fire for classified documents recently found in his home, after he had condemned his predecessor Donald Trump for the same reason.

His low approval rating no doubt worries Joe Biden, having hovered around 40% for most of the past year (even dropping to 36% in May and June).

In past decades, US presidents have only occasionally had low approval ratings, although Republican Donald Trump spent much of his term in the White House (2017-2021) at levels similar to those of Democrat Biden. In fact, Trump’s popularity in December 2017 had fallen to 33%.

The 80-year-old Biden is expected in the coming weeks to announce his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. Despite his low popularity rating, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Americans prefer Democrats over Republicans to handle a range of issues, such as: health care, women’s rights, gun control, tackling crime and the labor market. On matters of foreign policy and the economy, the percentages of Democrats and Republicans do not have large differences.

The poll was conducted on a representative sample of 1,029 adults and the margin of statistical error is ±3%.