Biden's public approval falls to 36 per cent, lowest of his presidency

U.S. President Joe Biden returns to the White House aboard Marine One, arriving back from his visits to South Korea and Japan, in Washington, U.S. May 24, 2022.  [Reuters]

U.S. President Joe Biden's public approval rating fell this week to 36 per cent, the lowest level of his presidency, as Americans suffered from rising inflation, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday.

The two-day national poll found that 59 per cent of Americans disapprove of Biden's job performance. His overall approval was down six percentage points from 42 per cent last week.

Biden's approval rating has been below 50 per cent since August, raising alarms that his Democratic Party is on track to lose control of at least one chamber of Congress in the Nov. 8 midterm election.

In a sign of weakening enthusiasm among Democrats, Biden's approval rating within his own party fell to 72 per cent from 76 per cent the prior week.

Only 10 per cent of Republicans approve of his job in office.

As low as Biden's overall approval rating is, it remains higher than the lows of his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose approval rating bottomed out at 33 per cent in December 2017.

This year, Biden has been dogged by a surge in U.S. consumer prices, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine helping drive fuel prices higher and global supply chains still hindered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll is conducted online in English throughout the United States.

The latest poll gathered responses from a total of 1,005 adults, including 456 Democrats and 358 Republicans. It has a credibility interval - a measure of precision - of four percentage points.