Joe Biden slumps in polls as inflation bites
More than half of Americans think the US is already at war with Russia or will be within a year, as Joe Biden’s approval rating hits a fresh low.
More than half of Americans think the US is already at war with Russia or will be within a year, according to a new poll that finds Joe Biden hasn’t benefited from any bounce in his approval rating since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began over a month ago.
Despite weeks of international attention on the President as he co-ordinated global sanctions on Russia, Mr Biden’s approval rating sank to 40 per cent, the lowest level yet according to the NBC poll, while his disapproval rating increased to 55 per cent, similarly the highest yet recorded for him.
In a poll that will concern Democrat strategists in the lead up to a critical midterm elections in November, more than 70 per cent of Americans had “very little” or “just some” confident in Mr Biden’s ability to manage the crisis.
Any hopes of a ‘rally around the flag’ effect from US leadership of efforts to punish Russia – as George W Bush enjoyed after invading Iraq, for instance – to help offset growing concern among voters about cost of living, appear to be dashed for now.
Inflation, which was 7.9 per cent in February, the highest annual rate for over 40 years, and jobs were the first and second most important issues, followed by the war in Ukraine, voting integrity laws and climate change, according to the poll published Sunday (Monday AEDT).
Democrats will be defending wafer thin majorities in both houses of Congress in the November Congressional poll, where Republicans are expected to retake the House of Representatives at least.
Voters said they preferred, by a 46 per cent to 44 margin with 10 per cent undecided, a Republican-controlled Congress, a worrying development for the White House and Democrat Congressional leaders given a preference for the Democrat party had been the norm in the NBC poll with a handful of exceptions over the last 25 years.
Almost 40 per cent of voters blamed President Biden and Democrat policies for inflation, compared with 28 per cent who blamed Covid-19, 23 per cent corporate profiteering, and 6 per cent Russia.
The survey was conducted between March 18-22, before Mr Biden’s latest trip to Europe where he met EU and NATO leaders and visited Poland, giving a fiery speech in Warsaw that appeared to call for regime change in Moscow.
Almost twice as many Americans said they were worried the US would become “too involved” in Ukraine’s defence as said they were concerned the US “would not get involved enough”. Sixteen per cent thought the US was already at war with Russia, and a further 41 per cent believed it would be by next year.
The average of major US polls has shown declining support for Mr Biden and Democrats throughout his first year in office, which included the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and further waves of Covid-19, making him the most unpopular president at this stage of his presidency except for Donald Trump.
In better news for Democrats, only 8 per cent of those polled had a negative view of the White House’s pick for the next Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, whose Senate confirmation hearing last week consumed the media and political class. Fifty-six per cent of respondents didn’t know who she was.
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