ABC News Poll: Biden Job Approval Hits New Low, with Majority Saying He’s Too Old for Another Term
President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference on the final day of the NATO summit in Madrid, Thursday, June 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows President Biden in a trailing position against Republicans in the 2024 presidential race.
The poll shows Biden’s approval rating at 36%, with 56% disapproving of his job performance.
Biden’s approval rating is the lowest on record for any first-term president a year and a half from the next presidential election in polling dating to Harry Truman. Similar was Gerald Ford, at 40% approval in May 1975; Jimmy Carter, at 37% in May 1979; and Trump, at 39% in April 2019. All three of them lost their re-election campaign.
The poll shows 68% say Biden is too old for another term as president. In contrast, just 44% see Biden’s potential opponent, Donald Trump, as too old. Trump is 76 years old, while Biden is 80.
Beyond chronological age, Trump far surpasses Biden in being seen as having the mental sharpness and the physical health it takes to serve effectively as president, with wide doubts about Biden on both fronts, the poll shows.
Another difference looks equally problematic for Biden: Americans by 54-36% say Trump did a better job handling the economy when he was president than Biden.
Both Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lead Biden in preference for the presidency in 2024.
Trump has challenges of his own. 56% say he should face criminal charges in investigations of whether he tried illegally to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 54% say he should face charges in investigations of his handling of classified documents after leaving office and his role in events leading to the storming of the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. About four in 10 in each case say he should not be charged.
Biden scores eight points better than Trump on another personal characteristic — being honest and trustworthy. But neither is well-rated on the attribute. Biden is seen as honest and trustworthy by 41% of Americans, Trump by 33%.
Regardless, Trump outperforms his Republican rivals. In an open-ended question, 43% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say they’d like to see the party nominate Trump for president next year, and when the six best-known candidates are named, he advances to 51%. That’s double the preference for his nearest potential opponent, DeSantis, at 25%.
Looking ahead to November 2024, in a Biden-Trump matchup, 44% of Americans say they’d definitely or probably vote for Trump, 38% for Biden, with 12% undecided. When the undecideds are asked how they lean, it’s 49-42%, Trump-Biden.
The ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone April 28-May 3, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,006 adults. Partisan divisions are 26-25-41%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 percentage points.
The survey was produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates.
— Information from ABC News
