Joe Biden is officially the least popular president in 70 years, with an approval rating of just 38.7 percent, according to a Gallup Poll released Friday.
No first-term president in the poll’s history has been reelected with an approval rating this low.
“With about six months remaining before Election Day, Biden stands in a weaker position than any prior incumbent,” the pollsters determined.
Biden’s challenger for the White House, former President Donald Trump, had a 46.8 percent approval rating at the same point in his presidency.
Approval ratings at this point in their presidencies for the last 70 years were as follows:
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1956): 73.2%
Ronald Reagan (1984): 54.5%
Richard Nixon (1972): 53.7%
Bill Clinton (1996): 53.0%
George W. Bush (2004): 51.0%
Jimmy Carter (1980): 47.7%
Donald Trump (2020): 46.8%
Barack Obama (2012): 45.9%
George H.W. Bush (1992): 41.8%
Joe Biden (2024): 38.7%
The New York Post reports:
Even Nixon and Carter had higher ratings than Biden, with 53.7% and 47.7%, respectively, and Eisenhower had the highest rating at 72.3%, according to the poll.
The results of Gallup’s presidential approval polls, which the organization has compiled since the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower began in 1952, have been strongly predictive of re-election success.
Historically, every incumbent in the past seven decades with an approval rating above 50% has won a second term. Only Barack Obama bucked the trend: his 2012 victory came despite a middling 46% approval six months ahead of that year’s general election.
No first-term president in Gallup’s history has returned to the White House with approval numbers as low as Biden’s — whose results this quarter ranked among the worst of the post-World War II era, in the bottom 12% of all presidential quarters going back to 1945.
Gallup surveyed 1,001 Americans from April 1 to April 22. The results have a 4-point margin of error.
