After a strong start in the polls, President Biden’s numbers are looking like former President Donald Trump’s.
In its first full-month rating from 10,000 likely voters, the latest Rasmussen Reports poll has the president at 50% approving his job and 47% disapproving.
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By comparison, Trump at this stage of his presidency had a 51% approval rating, with 49% disapproving in the full Rasmussen one-month evaluation. As of Tuesday, Rasmussen’s daily Biden approval is 49%.
Key groups are also following the Trump model, in which he struggled to get above 51% approval among all likely voters throughout his presidency. At this stage, Trump had an 81% approval rating among Republicans. Biden, by comparison, has an 83% approval rating among Democrats.
Even those with strong views are close. Biden’s “strongly approve” rating is 34%; his “strongly disapprove” rating is 39%. For Trump, it was 36% strongly approve, 40% strongly disapprove.
There is a difference in how likely voters view the direction of the country under Biden than under Trump.
With Trump, there was just a difference of 6 percentage points between those who viewed the country as headed in the right direction (44%) and those who viewed the country as going in the wrong direction (50%). Under Biden, the gap is 20 points, with 37% saying America’s on the right track versus 57% thinking it’s on the wrong track.
As part of the overall rating of a president, Rasmussen also compiles an approval index, the difference between strong approvals and strong disapprovals. In his first month, Biden scored a minus-five, slightly worse than Trump in his first full month at a minus-four. Here’s how Rasmussen explained it: “Thirty-four percent (34%) of voters strongly approved of Biden’s job performance in February, while 39% strongly disapproved. This gives him his first full-month Presidential Approval Index rating of -5. When Trump first took office in January 2017, he earned a full-month Approval Index rating of -4 after his first full month. During his final full month in office, his Approval Index rating was -8.”
Rasmussen, which is sometimes under fire because Trump often cited its results while he was president, made a point to note that unlike most media surveys that typically favor Biden, it uses a model nearly identical to the partisan breakdown in the 2020 election exit polls.
The New York Times and CNN 2020 exit polls indicated that the vote was composed of Democrats (37%), Republicans (36%), and independents (27%). Rasmussen’s model of 10,000 likely voters was weighted between 38% Democrats, 36% Republicans, and 27% independents.
Most media polls overweigh Democrats. For example, in the most recent Biden approval survey, done by Ipsos and Reuters, the president had a 57% approval rating. That poll included 45% Democrats.
