Biden Year One Approval Ratings Subpar, Extremely Polarized

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- During his first year in office, an average of 48.9% of Americans approved of the job President Joe Biden was doing. Biden's job approval ratings started relatively strong at 57%, but by September had plunged to 43%. A new Gallup poll finds 40% of U.S. adults approving of the job he is doing, his lowest to date.

Among post-World War II presidents elected to their first term, only Donald Trump had a lower first-year average rating, at 38.4%. Bill Clinton's first-year average was similar to Biden's, but all other first-year presidents averaged 57% or better.

	Dates of first year	First-year approval average
Kennedy	Jan 20, 1961-Jan 19, 1962	76.4
Eisenhower	Jan 20, 1953-Jan 19, 1954	68.8
G.W. Bush	Jan 20, 2001-Jan 19, 2002	67.9
G.H.W. Bush	Jan 20, 1989-Jan 19, 1990	65.9
Carter	Jan 20, 1977-Jan 19, 1978	61.9
Nixon	Jan 20, 1969-Jan 19, 1970	61.4
Obama	Jan 20, 2009-Jan 19, 2010	57.2
Reagan	Jan 20, 1981-Jan 19, 1982	57.1
Clinton	Jan 20, 1993-Jan 19, 1994	49.3
Biden	Jan 20, 2021-Jan 19, 2022	48.9
Trump	Jan 20, 2017-Jan 21, 2018	38.4
Gallup

Gallup measured Biden's job approval ratings on 13 occasions during his first year in office, including the most recent update from a Jan. 3-16 poll.

His ratings ranged between 54% and 57% from January through June 2021, as the U.S. saw a steep decline in COVID-19 infections and deaths when millions of American adults got vaccinated against the disease. Biden's public support first showed signs of decline in July amid a surge in infections in the summer, tied to the delta variant of the virus.

After a messy U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in late August, marred by a terrorist attack at the Kabul airport that killed 13 U.S. troops, his approval fell further and has yet to show signs of improvement. In the latest survey, 40% of Americans approve and 56% disapprove of the job he is doing, as the U.S. is plagued by the highest inflation in four decades and another surge of COVID-19 cases, this time fueled by the omicron variant of the coronavirus.

For Biden's most recent quarter in office, his fourth, which spanned from October 20 through January 19, an average of 41.7% of U.S. adults approved of Biden. Only Trump's fourth-quarter average was lower than Biden's, at 36.9%. All other presidents had fourth-quarter averages of 50% or above, with Barack Obama (50.0%), Ronald Reagan (50.8%) and Clinton (51.0%) closest to that mark. George W. Bush's 85.7% fourth-quarter average is the highest, as Americans rallied around his presidency after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Biden Has Lost Most Support Among Independents

The decline in Biden's approval over the course of 2021 has mostly been seen among political independents, among whom 33% approve of the president now compared with ratings of 50% or higher during the first six months of his presidency.

However, the last two Gallup polls show the president's support among his fellow Democrats is also slipping, to around 80% from 90% or higher prior to December.

Republicans' approval of Biden has been exceedingly low, typically below 10%, while Democrats' approval has generally been high.

Record Polarization for a First-Year President

Biden's extremely low approval ratings from Republicans throughout 2021, and the extremely high ratings from Democrats, led to levels of political party polarization beyond any for a first-year president and only exceeded once previously in any presidential year.

On average during his first year as president, Biden averaged 91% approval among Democrats, 46% among independents and 8% among Republicans. The average 83-percentage-point Democratic-Republican gap exceeded that for prior first-year presidents by a significant margin.

Before Biden, the most polarized first year belonged to Trump, with an average 75-point party gap in approval ratings. Trump's ratings were as low among Democrats as Biden's are among Republicans, but Trump's fellow Republicans were less likely to approve of him during his first year (83%) than Democrats were of Biden.

Other presidents' first-year ratings were far less polarized, primarily because supporters of the opposition party were more charitable in their ratings than they have been for Trump and Biden. Twenty-three percent of Republicans approved of the job Clinton and Obama were doing their first year in office, and 39% of Democrats approved of Reagan.

All other first-year presidents enjoyed job approval of close to 50% or higher among those who identified with the opposition party. And nearly all averaged approval ratings of 80% or higher among supporters of their party. All but Clinton, Trump and Biden had majority approval among political independents.

	Democrats	Independents	Republicans	Party gap
	%	%	%	pct. pts.
Biden	91	46	8	83
Trump	8	34	83	75
Obama	88	54	23	65
Clinton	75	45	23	52
Reagan	39	59	85	45
G.W. Bush	47	64	92	45
Nixon	49	61	82	34
G.H.W. Bush	51	61	83	32
Eisenhower	56	69	87	32
Kennedy	87	72	58	29
Carter	72	59	46	26
The party gap may differ from the difference of the Republican and Democratic approval ratings by one point due to rounding.
Gallup

From a broader historical perspective, Biden's first year was the second-most polarized for any president during any year in office. Only Trump's fourth and last year in office was more polarized. The last four presidential years -- Trump's second through fourth and Biden's first -- are the four most polarized in Gallup's polling history. The last seven presidential years -- including Obama's last two years and Trump's first -- rank among the nine most polarized presidential years, along with Obama and George W. Bush's fourth years, when both were seeking reelection.

	Year in office	Dates	Democrats	Republicans	Average gap
			%	%	pct. pts.
Trump	4	Jan 20-Jan 21	6	91	85
Biden	1	Jan 21-Jan 22	91	8	83
Trump	3	Jan 19-Jan 20	7	89	82
Trump	2	Jan 18-Jan 19	87	8	79
Obama	8	Jan 16-Jan 17	89	12	77
Obama	4	Jan 12-Jan 13	86	10	76
G.W. Bush	4	Jan 04-Jan 05	15	91	76
Trump	1	Jan 17-Jan 18	83	8	75
Obama	7	Jan 15-Jan 16	83	10	73
G.W. Bush	5	Jan 05-Jan 06	14	86	72
Obama	5	Jan 13-Jan 14	82	11	71
Obama	6	Jan 14-Jan 15	79	9	70
G.W. Bush	6	Jan 06-Jan 07	9	79	70
Gallup

Clearly, then, the heightened polarization in presidential approval ratings is a recent phenomenon. It appears to be more a function of how people now evaluate presidents rather than how presidents have performed. U.S. partisans in recent years have become unlikely to approve of a president from the other political party throughout his presidency regardless of the state of the nation or what he has done as president.

Bottom Line

Biden's first year in office has come to an end as the anniversary of his inauguration approaches, and he begins his second year on January 20 in a much weaker political position than he began. Unlike Trump, Biden enjoyed an extended honeymoon as president largely because independents evaluated his early performance positively. Once the COVID-19 situation began to take a turn for the worse, independents began to lose faith in Biden, and the Afghanistan situation further eroded their support for him.

Now, it appears some Democrats have also turned on Biden, although he maintains solid support among his own party. Those Democrats who no longer approve of Biden may be frustrated by the lack of progress on Biden's climate change and social spending plan and on voting rights legislation, if not also the state of the nation marked by rising inflation and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Although Biden can tout a major COVID-19 relief package, a bipartisan infrastructure bill, as well as declining unemployment and solid economic growth on his watch, the negative factors are outweighing the positive ones when Americans, particularly independents, assess his performance.

One reason that Biden has yet to pass major parts of his agenda is that the Democrats hold narrow majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Apart from the infrastructure bill, Biden has been able to advance his legislative priorities only when he could get all Democrats on board, and the Senate could use special rules to pass bills with a simple majority vote since Republicans have been unified in opposition to nearly all of his plans.

With the midterm elections looming later this year and Biden's job approval stuck in the low 40s, the Democratic Party is facing significant losses of congressional seats. If that happens, Biden will have to govern with Republican majorities in his third and fourth years in office, and his ability to pass his agenda will be further hampered.

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