OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden’s job approval ratings have been falling for several months, but things have taken a turn for the worse just nine months ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
According to Fox News, a new average of polls show Biden’s approval rating beneath 40 percent for the first time since he took office in January 2021.
“A Real Clear Politics average of all the most recent national surveys measuring Biden’s standing put the president’s approval at 39% and his disapproval at 54%,” the news network reported online.
There are a number of issues and crises that are weighing down the president’s job approval numbers:
Biden has also found himself at the center of a Russia-Ukraine border conflict in Europe. Last month, Biden predicted Russian President Vladimir Putin would advance into Ukraine, saying, “My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.”
Biden continues to take heat from Americans over rising gas prices, leading his own party to introduce a proposal to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax in order to help blunt the financial pain of surging prices at the pump.
Other costs, including energy bills, are also having an impact on Americans. New York residents say their bills have doubled in the latest wrinkle to red-hot inflation.
While American wage earners saw their take-home pay rise the most in 40 years during former President Donald Trump’s term, thanks to a booming job market and his signature tax cuts, but those wage increases have been wiped out thanks to continually rising prices.
Gas prices especially have hit consumers’ pocketbooks hard. Fox Business reported earlier this week that prices have risen steadily over each of the past six weeks after jumping roughly a dollar or more a gallon, on average, during Biden’s first year in office.
“The nationwide average price for a gallon of gas increased to $3.42 on Monday, according to GasBuddy’s latest data. The national average is already up 12.3 cents compared to a month ago and 97.5 cents per gallon higher than a year ago, according to GasBuddy,” the business network reported.
Food prices have also skyrocketed.
“One of the more closely watched categories is food, as soaring prices have hit consumers’ pocketbooks, especially those least able to afford it. Food prices in December 2021 increased by 6.3% from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) Consumer Price Index. This is the fastest pace of food-price inflation since October 2008, when swelling energy prices lifted the cost of other commodities,” CNN reported last month.
These so-called “kitchen table issues” matter the most to the vast majority of voters and are very likely contributing to Biden’s tanking approval ratings.
The Washington Times noted last month:
Politicians on both sides of the aisle must never forget the importance of “kitchen table” items — those issues which are of intense interest among voters, such as wages, jobs and health care costs. President Biden earned only tepid reviews in this department, according to a CNBC/Change Research survey which gauged voter sentiment.
The poll revealed that Mr. Biden earned a “D” grade when it came to the economy, jobs, health care costs, helping the middle class, raising wages, bolstering the “wallet” of a typical citizen and helping working parents afford child care.
“This should be a wake-up call for Biden and Democrats: There is overwhelming frustration with the direction of the economy and Biden earns C’s or D’s on every measure in this poll, from the macro-level to kitchen-table issues,” the poll analysis reported.
“Trump voters express strong disapproval of Biden and rate the economy negatively, as they have since the day Biden took office. But Biden earns such remarkably low marks because his own voters are unsatisfied. They see and feel the rising cost of everything despite record corporate profits, not the impact of the American Rescue Plan or the bipartisan infrastructure investment package, and they are frustrated with the lack of progress on a Democratic policy agenda,” the analysis added.
