President Joe Biden’s economic approval ratings have now fallen below the lowest levels experienced by former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama, according to a new poll.
The latest CNBC All-America Economic Survey, conducted earlier this month and released on Monday, pegged Biden’s economic approval rating at 30%, a decline from April of 5 percentage points.
The lowest that Obama’s economic approval ever clocked in at in the survey was 37%. Trump’s was 41%.
Biden’s economic approval has dropped even more precipitously when looking at the same survey from last summer, when it stood at 42%. Inflation has since accelerated to rates not seen in 40 years. Inflation, as gauged by the consumer price index, clocked in at a blistering 9.1% in the 12 months ending in June.
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The president’s economic approval among Republicans is abysmal — just 6% give him good marks. He is also doing poorly among his Democratic base, with only 58% of those in his party offering support for his economic performance. A quarter of independents, the key swing group, said they approved.
Biden’s trouble with the economy is also bleeding into his overall headline approval ratings. Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed said they disapprove of Biden’s handling of the presidency, and just 36% approve.
More than 70% said that they don’t think Biden’s efforts to fight inflation are working or think they are actually worsening the scourge of higher prices. Just about 1 in 10 think his policies are helping the situation.
More than half of those queried think that the country’s economic situation will get worse over the next year, a higher share than when the survey was conducted during the financial crisis.
The poll, and others like it, are bad news for the administration and the Democratic Party heading into this year’s midterm elections. Democrats only hold a slim four-seat margin in the House, and the Senate is evenly divided with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as the tiebreaking vote.
Republicans are hoping to wrest control of both chambers in November and are using Biden’s low approval ratings and the economy as an indictment of Democratic leadership. Historically speaking, the party not in control of the presidency also has a leg up in midterm elections.
And it isn’t just inflation that is plaguing the economy. Because of the high prices, the Federal Reserve has had to jack up interest rates aggressively, something that naturally results in reduced demand and the economy slowing.
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As the central bank’s mission to tame inflation becomes even more desperate, the odds of a full-blown recession have been ticking up.
Many economists view two straight quarters of downward growth as recessionary, and the economy contracted at a 1.6% annual rate in the first quarter. The Atlanta Fed’s “GDP Now” tracker is now predicting that gross domestic product growth will decline in a second straight quarter, which would likely indicate that the country is in a recession.
