With President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump comfortably leading in their respective party’s primaries, the focus has now shifted to the outcome of a potential rematch between them. The results of a Gallup poll released on Thursday detailed the blueprint for a potential Biden re-election.
What Happened: Biden’s job approval rating in the third year of his presidency is the second worst among post-World War II presidents in their first term at office, according to the Gallup’s survey, which covered the period between Jan. 20, 2023 and Jan. 19, 2024. About 39.8% of Americans approved the incumbent’s third-year job performance.
Biden’s rating is worse than all the other past presidents, except Jimmy Carter, whose job approval rating in the third year of his presidency was at 37.4%. Gallup noted that it was during this year that inflation spiked to double digits and U.S. citizens were taken hostage by Iran.
Dwight Eisenhower, with a job approval rating of 72.1% during the period was the top scorer on this count. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon also had sub-50% third-year averages, but they fared better than Biden.
A breakdown of Biden’s approval rating showed that 83% of Democrats approved of Biden’s job performance compared to 35% of independents and 6% of Republicans.
The survey also found that about half of recent presidents saw their ratings improve in the fourth year of their presidency during their first terms.
Changes in job approval ratings between the third and fourth years of the presidency showed that “presidents who successfully won reelection were close to — or exceeded — 50% approval during their fourth year in office,” Gallup said.
Source: Gallup
Biden’s Task Cut Out: Biden has started his re-election campaign on the back foot due to his weak third-year job approval rating for a first-term president. His job approval rating is notably below the 50% mark — a cut-off level that has been associated with re-election.
“While some presidents have seen sharp improvements in their fourth year and won a second term, Biden's third-year rating was worse than any of theirs, suggesting he has a bigger hill to climb,” the pollster said.
Biden could make some progress with respect to his job approval ratings if he can win over the minority of Democrats who do not approve of his performance as president, the report said. But more crucial is getting the independents to throw their weight behind him, it added.
“However, the key to Biden's winning reelection may lie more in convincing a larger share of independents that he is doing a good job and is deserving of a second term.,” Gallup said.
“His approval rating among independents has mostly been below 40% since the fall of 2021 but was above 50% during the honeymoon phase of his presidency.”
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