As 2023 wraps up, President Joe Biden has found himself well underwater in approval polls and behind his potential 2024 GOP challengers more often than he is ahead, including in key states when pitted against that primary’s polling frontrunner: former President Donald Trump.

What You Need To Know

  • As 2023 wraps up, President Joe Biden has found himself well underwater in approval polls and behind his potential 2024 GOP challengers more often than he is ahead
  • Biden has tried to assuage the public and his supporters that the polling rut is misleading, telling reporters outside his Delaware campaign headquarters on Sunday that “you’re reading the wrong polls”
  • poll after poll released by well-respected pollsters in recent weeks have presented a different picture than Biden likes to project as he balances reelection efforts with wars in the Middle East and Europe, widespread economic dissatisfaction, the criminal prosecution of and Republican investigations into his son, and a dysfunctional, disagreeable Congress whose Republican majority wants to impeach him
  • Young Americans trusted Biden and Trump the least to handle the Israel-Hamas war, with 44% saying they trusted neither man. More than half of independent voters lacked trust in both candidates to resolve the crisis

Biden has tried to assuage the public and his supporters that the polling rut is misleading, telling reporters outside his Delaware campaign headquarters on Sunday that “you’re reading the wrong polls.” Moments later, a man police say was drunk crashed his car into a Secret Service vehicle down the street from the president. Biden and the First Lady were unharmed.

But poll after poll released by well-respected pollsters in recent weeks have presented a different picture than Biden likes to project as he balances reelection efforts with wars in the Middle East and Europe, widespread economic dissatisfaction, the criminal prosecution of and Republican investigations into his son, and a dysfunctional, disagreeable Congress whose Republican majority wants to impeach him.

A New York Times/Siena College national poll released Tuesday found Biden had a 39% approval rating among likely voters, while 57% disapproved. Monmouth University and CNBC polls of American adults released this week clocked him with approval ratings in the mid-30s and disapproval in the low 60s — all-time low marks for Biden in those respective polls since becoming president. Fox News released a poll of registered voters on Sunday with a 43% approval rating and a 57% disapproval rating, up from Biden’s all-time lows in November of 40% and 59%, respectively. And a HarrisX/Harris Poll survey of registered voters commissioned by Harvard University last week reported 43% approve and 55% disapprove.

All told, polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight has Biden averaging around 39% approving of his job performance and 56% disapproving — near his worst marks as president.

Pollsters have sourced the bad grades for Biden to Americans' economic woes and the frustration of 18-29 year-olds — an age bracket that he won roughly two-thirds of in 2020 — with the administration’s record and its handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Biden and his allies have argued that the economic picture is better than people think and that they are working hard to limit civilian casualties in Gaza while supporting Israel’s war effort.

“The data shows that the economy is in a better place. But we understand that Americans don't feel it right now,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing on Tuesday. “There are ways that we're going to continue to make sure that the number one thing, when it comes to Bidenomics, that the president deals with — lowering costs — we're going to put that front and center.”

But the data also shows an American public deeply dissatisfied with the economy. Monmouth found majorities disapprove of Biden’s handling of infrastructure policy, job creation and inflation. Among those polled, 44% said they were struggling financially and only 12% said their situation was improving. In the CNBC poll, 66% of Americans had a negative view of the U.S. economy, a record in the 17 years the network has asked that question. 

“The Biden administration keeps touting their infrastructure investments and a host of positive economic indicators,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement. “Those data points may be factual, but most Americans are still smarting from higher prices caused by post-pandemic inflation. This seems to be what’s driving public opinion. There is political danger in pushing a message that basically tells people their take on their own situation is wrong."

In an interview with Spectrum News, White House communications director Ben LaBolt said that the U.S. has ended the year on a "positive economic note," including a steep decline in inflation, and expressed optimism about a possible reversal in polling figures on the economy.

"It's certain that the feeling coming out of the pandemic ... was a difficult moment for people around the world, and there was a supply chain crisis that caused significant inflation globally," LaBolt said. "I think we're exiting this year at a different moment, you've seen coonsumer confidence, for example, a very important economic measure, surge over the past couple of months, inflation is coming down significantly."

"he economy is moving in the right direction, wages are up, they're outpacing inflation. It takes time for all of that to sink in. But we expect to see those numbers move in a positive direction next year."

As for the war in the Middle East, Trump beats out Biden 46% to 38% on the question of who registered voters thought would better handle the crisis, according to the Times/Siena College poll. Only 33% approved of Biden’s approach to the war and 57% disapproved.

Among voters ages 18 to 29, those numbers are even worse: Trump tops Biden 49% to 30% and just 20% approve of Biden’s handling, with 72% disapproving.

But the White House said on Tuesday they won’t change course when it comes to the war.

“​​The president doesn't make national security decisions based on polls. He makes them based on principles,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said at the briefing Tuesday. “There are some core principles that are at stake here — of course, Israel's right to exist as a nation and to defend their — their citizens against attacks like what happened on the 7th of October.”

Democrats have largely backed the notion that Biden should ignore his defectors and continue to support the Israeli government as it wages a war that has seen nearly 20,000 deaths in Gaza and almost two million people displaced since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that left 1,200 people dead.

“I understand that there's kind of a division between the younger voters between Israel and Gaza. And I really believe that the president is on very much on the right side of that,” Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said on CNN’s “The Lead” on Tuesday. “And sometimes you may alienate some voters, but it's really most important to be on the right side on that.”

But others have warned Biden has a lot to do to win back Muslim and Arab voters, as well as other Americans sympathetic to the Palestinian peoples’ plight. Across the country, Muslim and Arab leaders have denounced his support of Israel’s campaign in Gaza and onetime Biden voters in those communities have said they won’t vote for him again. Dozens of House Democrats and a handful of senators have called on the president to push for a lasting cease-fire.

“There’s a lot that has to be done” by Biden to win back angered former supporters, Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” on Sunday. Michigan, a key swing state, has one of the largest Muslim populations in the country. “I know this community, they are hurting.”

"The president doesn't make national security decisions as a result of polling, he does it for what's in the national security interests of the United States and our allies," said LaBolt, adding: "At the end of the day, he is Commander in Chief, he needs to do what is in the national security interests of the United States, and that's what he's doing here."

Former two-term Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., advised Biden on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday to draw starker contrasts with Trump, who leads the GOP primary field by vast and growing double-digit margins nationally and in key early states with just weeks to go until voters start having their say.

“They need to start behaving as if this campaign is in the last 90 days,” the Missouri moderate said. “The president himself begins to need to draw contrast. And he's uncomfortable doing that. He wants to be president. He doesn't want to be a candidate. He wants to, rise to the level of a statesman every day, ‘that I am taking care of the things you care about.’”

“He has got to start being a street brawler,” she added.

The Times/Siena College poll found Trump leading Biden 46% to 44% among registered voters, while Biden led 47% to 45% among respondents who said they were likely to vote. This, Biden’s allies argued, was a sign of his strength despite his poor approval numbers and Americans’ economic frustrations.

“‘Biden leading Trump by 2 in new NYT/Siena poll’ should be the headline,” Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina wrote on X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter. “Yes, it's still early for polls being predictive, but Biden has been up or tied in 7 polls this month and you wouldn't know that given the insane double standard the press has with covering Biden/polls.”

But Biden needed a nearly five percentage point popular vote win — to the tune of seven million voters — to squeak out narrow victories in key swing states with margins in the tens of thousands. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by two percentage points in 2016 and lost the Electoral College to Trump by nearly 80.

As Messina noted, some polls beyond the Times/Siena College poll have Biden ahead of Trump, but nearly all national and state-level polls released by major firms in December have had the current president even with or behind the former president. In the handful of polls Biden is ahead in, it’s only by a few percentage points at most.

“The data is showing every single poll coming out right now, every one, is showing him falling further behind his approval numbers at historic lows,” longshot Biden primary challenger Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press NOW” last week. “If we don't wake up soon we're going to be in for a tragedy.”

The White House, on the other hand, expressed confidence that Biden's polling figures will rebound.

"I think that the press is a lot more focused on polling, like approval ratings, than we are," LaBolt said. "I think if you look at electoral outcomes historically, they're not necessarily driven by things like approval ratings. They're driven by things like, where's consumer confidence? Well, right now it's high. Are wages increasing or decreasing? Wages are increasing. Is inflation being lowered, or is it going up? It's being lowered.

"The president focuses every day on delivering outcomes for the American people what he can do for hardworking families," he continued. "There's record labor force participation among women, the Black and Latino unemployment rates are at historic lows, costs are coming down, and so all of these things are really going to matter to the American people. We know they're coming out of a tough time ... we're entering a brighter period here."