President Biden's approval rating in free fall, new national poll shows

close

Video

Fox News Flash top headlines for October 20

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com.

Former President Trump suffered from negative poll numbers during his four-year tenure in the White House, and now his successor is suffering the same fate, with a new national poll indicating that President Biden's standing among Americans remains well underwater.

Just 37% of Americans questioned in a Quinnipiac University survey say they approve of the job Biden’s doing as president, with 52% giving him a thumbs-down. The poll was conducted Oct. 15-18 and released Tuesday.

Adding to Biden's political peril, just 28% of registered independents give the president a thumbs-up on his job performance, while 56% do not. The Quinnipiac survey indicated that Republicans, by a 95%-3% margin, disapproved of how the president’s handling his duties in the White House, with Democrats approving 80%-11%.

The president’s numbers are basically unchanged from Quinnipiac’s previous national poll – conducted in early October – when Biden stood at 38%-53% approval/disapproval. 

CLICK HERE FOR THE LATEST POLLING FROM FOX NEWS 

Biden’s approval rating hovered in the low to mid 50s during his first six months in the White House. But the president’s numbers started sagging in August in the wake of Biden's much-criticized handling of the turbulent U.S. exit from Afghanistan and following a surge in COVID cases this summer among mainly unvaccinated people due to the spread of the highly infectious delta variant as the nation continues to combat the coronavirus, the worst pandemic to strike the globe in a century. 

President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the debt ceiling during an event in the State Dining Room of the White House, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)  (Evan Vucci)

The plunge in the president’s approval was also compounded by the latest surge of migrants trying to cross into the U.S. along the southern border with Mexico, as well as the rise in inflation, which has fueled a jump in gas and food prices.

Biden’s approval among the slightly narrower pool of registered voters was 40%, with 51% disapproving. 

The president stood at 50%-49% approval/disapproval in the most recent Fox News national poll, which was conducted Sept. 12-15. Fox News will release a new national poll Wednesday. 

An average of all the most recent national surveys on the president’s approval rating compiled by Real Clear Politics indicated Biden at 42%-51%.

BIDEN DROPS BELOW 40% IN A NEW NATIONAL POLL

Only 38% of Americans hold a favorable opinion of Biden, with 50% seeing the president in an unfavorable way.

Opinions of Trump were equally as negative, at 39% favorable and 52% unfavorable. 

Nine months removed from the White House, Trump remains very popular with most Republican voters and extremely influential with GOP politicians, as he continues to play a kingmaker’s role in party politics and teases another presidential run in 2024. But he also repeatedly makes unfounded claims that the 2020 election was rampant with "massive voter fraud" and "rigged." And the former president continues to push for election audits in numerous states across the country.

A majority of Americans questioned in the poll – 58% -- said they don’t want to see Trump run for president again in 2024, with 35% favoring such a move. But among Republicans only, support for another Trump White House bid soared to 78%.

By a 49%-43% margin, those surveyed said Trump’s had a mainly negative impact on the GOP. Fifty-one percent of Americans said Trump’s been undermining democracy since the 2020 presidential election, with 39% saying he’s been protecting democracy.

"While a majority of Americans say, ‘been there, done that’ about Trump, and half feel he has damaged the underpinnings of democracy, support for the former president within the GOP has grown," Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy noted. 

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Other findings in the poll: By a 52%-41% margin, Americans say the country's worse off today than a year ago, and opposition to a wall along the nation's southern border with Mexico stands at 49%, down from a high of 64% in 2017. The survey also indicates that 59% considered the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by right-wing extremists trying to upend congressional certification of Biden's election victory over Trump an attack on the federal government.

The Quinnipiac University poll questioned 1,341 Americans, with an overall sampling error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.