- The Biden administration’s public opinion woes continue.
- A USA Today/Suffolk poll from the weekend had grim numbers for both President Biden and VP Harris. NEARLY HALF OF VOTERS SAY BIDEN WORSE PRESIDENT THAN EXPECTED, MOST DON’T WANT TO SEE HIM RUN AGAIN: POLL
- Harris hit an historic low approval rating of 28%, even lower than Dick Cheney’s all-time worst.
A new poll from USA Today and Suffolk University released on Sunday contains a grim snapshot of public sentiment toward the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden has been on a months-long slide toward historically poor polling numbers, but yesterday’s USA Today/Suffolk poll was even worse for Vice President Kamala Harris.
The American public’s opinion of Vice President Kamala Harris and her track record as President Joe Biden’s supposed right-hand woman is tanking.
According to the survey conducted over the phone Nov. 3-5, 51.2 percent of Americans disapprove of “the job Kamala Harris has done as Vice President.” While it’s been months since Harris relented after scandalously refusing to visit the southern U.S. border despite a raging crisis, voters still do not hold her in high esteem. Harris’s approval rating is hovering at just 28 percent, which is 10 points lower than the public’s view of the president.
Biden’s approval is also backsliding at an alarming rate, as Democrats grow more concerned about their party’s performance in the upcoming 2022 midterms. The same poll that exposed the public’s low opinion of Harris also found that a majority of Americans, 59 percent, disapprove of the president’s track record 11 months into his tenure in the White House.
Of those surveyed, 46 percent, including 16 percent who cast a vote for the Democrat, say Biden has underperformed at his job since getting elected. Among independents, 44 percent agree that Biden has done a worse job in office than they expected.
Biden told reporters last week, “I didn’t run to determine how well I’m going to do in the polls,” but his words are not convincing a majority of Americans, 64 percent, who say they do not support Biden running for a second presidential term. That’s a higher number than the 58 percent opposed to former President Donald Trump running again. Of that 64 percent, 28 percent identify as Democrats.
At this early stage of a modern presidency, Harris’ numbers in the USA Today/Suffolk poll are unprecedented.
The closest comparison — which involves slightly different methodology and margins of error — would be former Vice President Dick Cheney, the most unpopular US vice president in polling history. He bottomed out at 30% in Gallup’s tracking survey, but that wasn’t until the end of former President George W. Bush’s second term in 2007.
Harris has taken on thorny assignments early on in her tenure as VP, including running point on the administration’s disasterous efforts at handling the migration surge of asylum seekers at the southern border.
Joe Concha: When you look at the vice president and her poll numbers where she is at 28% approval that is astounding. This was supposed to be a historic candidate in Kamala Harris who would be handed the bottom by an 80-something-year-old Joe Biden where he says ‘okay I’ve righted the country and now I’m going to pass it on to my Vice President.’ If you’re the Democratic Party how could you possibly put her up as the nominee right now when not even three in 10 Americans approve of the job she’s doing and it’s impossible to find her? She’s never done a press conference since she’s been vice president, she hasn’t done one sit-down interview with a major broadcast network in five months. So, when you’re unseen and you see what’s happening at the border, the one job she was given, the important job anyway, that’s how you get to 28% and that’s why this administration is in serious, serious trouble.
As Insider’s Robin Bravender reported in late October, Harris aides are quietly worried about the 2024 presidential election, should Biden forego a reelection bid, with former 2020 primary rival and Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg posing a potential threat.