Support from a slim majority might be all President Biden can expect — and maybe it’s all he needs.
President Biden entered the White House last month with a broadly positive approval rating — but well shy of the two-thirds of Americans who expressed support for his former boss, Barack Obama, when he took office 12 years ago.
In fact, Biden’s net approval rating is lower than that of any incoming president since the dawn of modern polling, except for his predecessor, Donald Trump. It’s just another clear sign that we’ve entered a new era of partisanship: Media fragmentation and the hard-line politics it has helped foster may make it impossible for any leader to become a true consensus figure.
But it also bears noting that Biden’s approval rating is basically a reverse image of Trump’s. In addition to being loathed by Republicans and embraced by Democrats, he’s firmly in positive territory among independents — who had consistently disapproved of Trump’s performance. Continue reading.
