As Biden Approval Ratings Tank, Democrats Worry It Will Weigh Them Down In Midterms

President Joe Biden hit his lowest approval ratings as his agenda continues to be hampered by obstacles.

Democrats are worried that Biden’s woes will hurt them in the November midterm races.

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Research poll released on Friday found Biden’s approval rating at 39%. This is the lowest approval rating the first-term president has received in his 16 months in office.

Biden’s approval rating among Democrats fell from 82% in April to 73%. Democrats also expressed pessimism about the state of the country despite a president of their own party in the White House. Only 33% of Democrats expressed optimism about the country’s direction, a drop from 49% last month.

Warnings about Biden’s approval among Democrats have been reflected by other polls which captured discontent across his base.

In a Quinnipiac University poll released on May 18, only 26% of Hispanics said they approved of Biden’s presidency compared to 60% who expressed discontent.

A month earlier, the Harvard Institute of Politics found that only 41% of Americans aged 18 to 29 said they approved of Biden. Many in this group expressed apathy toward participating in elections, reasoning that their vote makes little difference.

Even among women and Black Americans, the two pillars of Democrat support, Biden’s numbers declined. In April, CNN reported that 67% of Black Americans approved of Biden, down 20 percentage points in the last year. Women expressed only 42% approval of Biden, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on May 17.

All of this does not bode well for Democrats as they face an increasingly confident Republican party that is poised to capture at least one branch of Congress in the fall.

Throughout Biden’s presidency, Democrats have struggled to pass large parts of his domestic policy agenda. But the problem has not only come from Republicans, but division among Democrats embodied by the refusal of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va., to embrace proposals on climate change, voting rights and federal spending.

Biden has been hobbled by crises from the start of his presidency.

The death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic recently crossed the 1 million mark after more than half a million deaths took place since Biden took office, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Fighting inflation has become the top domestic priority for Biden. Inflation is at highs not seen since the 1980s, driven largely by supply chain disruptions created by the pandemic and skyrocketing energy prices.

It is no coincidence that Americans’ lack of confidence in the economy has dovetailed with their dour view of Biden. According to a CNN poll on May 2, 8 in 10 American adults said the federal government was not doing enough to fight inflation. And 59% expressed disapproval at how Biden has managed the economy since taking office.