Trump overtakes Biden in approval ratings after farcical Afghan withdrawal, border crisis
President Joe Biden was overtaken by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, for the first time since his 2020 election victory, according to a new Harvard/Harris poll.
Biden enjoyed his highest approval rating in May at 57 percent, but support for the sitting commander-in-chief has dwindled to 46 percent this month. This comes after the chaotic withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the alarming crisis at the US-Mexico border, a deadlock in Congress over infrastructure bills, as well as the recent surge in Covid hospitalizations. On the other hand, Trump's approval ratings have remained at about 46 percent since his 2020 presidential election loss, but surpassed that of Biden after rising to 48 percent earlier this month.
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Speaking to The Times, Mark Penn, co-director of the Harvard/Harris survey, said that the "mounting issues on all fronts have led to the surprise conclusion that Trump is now seen as being as good a president as Biden, suggesting the honeymoon is being replaced with buyer's remorse."
The poll came as Biden held talks with feuding Democrats at the White House on Tuesday, September 21, in an effort to reach an agreement on the controversial $1.1 trillion infrastructure deal and the second $3.5 trillion bill that calls for more social spending. Meanwhile, thousands of Haitian migrants have crossed the Rio Grande and settled in camps outside of the city of Del Rio in Texas. The poll also came amid revelations that the US mistakenly killed 10 Afghan civilians, including one aid worker and seven children, in a botched drone strike that was originally meant to kill an ISIS-K target.
According to the Harvard/Harris poll, 55 percent of respondents also believe former Vice-President Mike Pence was a better vice president than his successor, Kamala Harris. Meanwhile, 63 percent of people favored Mike Pompeo as the better secretary of state when compared to Anthony Blinken. Furthermore, only about a third of independent voters approved of Biden's job in August - marking a new low as he trailed his own vice president among the same group and across all voters nationwide, per a Gallup poll released Wednesday.
The concerning numbers, which were released eight months into the Biden presidency, gauged the opinions of Americans from September 1 to September 17, just days after the US wrapped up its drawdown from Afghanistan amid a brewing crisis at the US-Mexico border. The poll found that just 43 percent of Americans approved of Biden's work in office, while 53 percent said they disapproved of his performance. Meanwhile, VP Harris fared slightly better with an approval rating of 49 percent, considering her nationwide disapproval also stands at 49 percent.
Having said that, the new numbers are a steep drop from Biden's 50 percent approval rating in July, when the nation struggled a summer Covid wave fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant. At the time, his disapproval rating was only 45 percent. According to the polls, the drop largely stems from dissatisfied independent voters, who once favored Biden by 61 percent. As of now, only 37 percent of independents approve of the job he's doing while 56 percent disapprove of his performance.
The drop could also be explained by the devastating ISIS-K suicide bomb attack that claimed the lives of 170 Afghans and 13 US service members in Kabul -- marking the US military's worst casualties in the region since 2011. Interestingly, Harris's approval ratings among independent voters is nearly 10 points higher than that of her boss, at 46 percent. Meanwhile, her disapproval rating is also slightly lower than him at 51 percent.
What's more? A staggering 69 percent of voters surveyed said they disapproved of the way the country was being governed. Meanwhile, just 30 percent, or less than a third, are satisfied with Biden's job in governing America.
Biden's hardline stance on vaccines may have also cost him approval ratings, especially after he issued a sweeping and controversial mandate covering two-thirds of the US workforce. Republican-led states have openly challenged the decree, announcing plans to take legal action. Of course, the border crisis is not helping his cause. According to data from Customs and Border Patrol, more than 208,000 migrant encounters occurred at the southern border in August, and nearly 1.5 million migrants were encountered by Border Patrol in Fiscal Year 2021 thus far.