Joe Biden pitched himself as the antithesis of Donald Trump, but the president is ending his first year in office with a similarly dismal report card from voters as his predecessor.
Like Trump, more voters gave Biden a failing mark at the quarter mark of his term than those who awarded an “A” or “B” combined, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday. About 37 percent of those surveyed rated Biden’s performance as an “F,” compared to the 31 percent who gave either an “A” or “B” grade for the past year.
Biden’s results were even a touch worse than Trump’s at the same point in their presidencies, when 35 percent of voters in 2018 gave Trump a failing mark against 34 percent A’s and B’s. Slightly more voters gave Biden the middling mark of “C” than Trump got in the comparable 2018 survey, 18 percent to 14 percent, and the pair got nearly identical percentages of “D” grades.
Only 2 percent of those surveyed did not have an opinion on Biden’s first year grade. The poll of 2,005 registered voters was conducted Jan. 15-16, with an overall margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Biden is also ending his first year in office with his lowest approval rating yet in POLITICO/Morning Consult’s weekly polling: 40 percent, compared to 56 percent disapproval. That’s worse than Trump’s 44 percent approval in early January 2018, roughly a year into his tenure.
More than 85 percent of Republican voters gave Biden either a “D” or an “F” grade, as did close to half of self-identified independents. Only 5 percent of Republican respondents gave Biden an “A” or “B,” though about a quarter of independents gave the president strong marks.
Democrats were far less negative toward Biden’s first year in office, with just 11 percent grading him at either “D” or “F.” However, a sizable bloc of the president’s base was unawed by his first-year performance — as nearly one in four Democrats gave him a “C” grade, along with a similar percentage of independents.
However, unlike Trump, there was virtually no gap between the grades given to Biden by men and women. Trump fared poorly with women relative to men, whereas Biden’s numbers between the two groups were barely distinguishable from one another — or his overall grades.
Across an array of subjects, one area where Biden got the worst marks was also one on which he campaigned most heavily: restoring a sense of unity within the country. Four out of 10 survey respondents — and nearly three-quarters of Republicans — gave Biden an “F” thus far.
He also graded out poorly on immigration and the national debt, two issues that Republicans have used as a cudgel against Democrats for years.
However, Biden did get the biggest proportion of “A” grades (18 percent) for his handling of Covid-19 in 2021. Yet, that subject also showed a large partisan divide as rising case rates ravage the nation. About 37 percent of Democrats gave Biden the top mark for his pandemic response, compared to just 3 percent of Republicans — with independents falling squarely in between.
Morning Consult is a global data intelligence company, delivering insights on what people think in real time by surveying tens of thousands across the globe every single day.
More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents: Toplines | Crosstabs
