Poll Finds Trump Beating Biden by 6 Points As POTUS’ Popularity Continues to Plummet
18:22 GMT 24.12.2021 (Updated: 18:37 GMT 24.12.2021)
© AFP 2023 / MARIO TAMA
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President Joe Biden’s rating hit a near-historic low point earlier this month, as an NPR/PBS poll found that just 41 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing as inflation is beginning to pinch, a new Covid is spiking and there is deadlock in Congress over his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better social and climate spending package.
Former president Donald Trump would handily defeat Joe Biden by a whopping six points if an election were held today, polling conducted by Redfield & Wilton Strategies has found.
In a questionnaire of 1,500 American adults conducted on 18 December, the London-based market research firm found Biden trailing behind Trump by 38 percent to 44 percent in a hypothetical matchup. Another 12 percent had difficulty making up their mind, and five percent said they’d pick a third party. One percent indicated that they wouldn’t vote.
Trump leads over Biden for the third time in our US polling.
— Redfield & Wilton Strategies (@RedfieldWilton) December 22, 2021
2024 Presidential Election Hypothetical Voting Intention (18 Dec):
Donald Trump: 44% (+2)
Joe Biden: 38% (–)
Don't know: 12% (-4)
Changes +/- 5 Dechttps://t.co/YqxCk9zPnC pic.twitter.com/hmFE4adqsm
The poll found that 41 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s performance, and 44 percent disapprove. For comparison, Trump’s approval rating during his 11th month in office in December 2017 hovered between 41 and 42 percent, according to NBC News/WSJ and CNBC surveys conducted at the time.
Vice-President Kamala Harris’s approval rating was even lower than Biden’s in the Redfield & Wilton survey, sitting at 37 percent approval, according to the pollster. Harris’ net rating is actually up four points from 33 percent approval in polling conducted two weeks earlier.
Kamala Harris Approval Rating (18 Dec):
— Redfield & Wilton Strategies (@RedfieldWilton) December 22, 2021
Approve: 37% (+2)
Disapprove: 41% (-1)
Net: -4% (+3)
Changes +/- 5 Dechttps://t.co/YqxCk9zPnC pic.twitter.com/ZoWCVDOkId
The polling finds the Biden administration’s Covid policy to be its strongest suit, with 44 percent of those questioned saying they approve of the administration’s policy, and 38 percent saying they disapprove. On all other fronts, including the economy, education, the environment, crime, housing, immigration, relations with China and Russia, and national security and defence policy, less than half of those polled expressed approval of the job the president was doing. On immigration, 46 percent said they either disapprove or strongly disapprove of the administration’s policy.
Trump has spent virtually all of the past 11 months hinting at another run for office in 2024, but has yet to make a firm commitment. In the meantime, soft and hard anti-Trump Republicans have quietly sought to come up with a potential challenger to the property mogul, looking for a more traditionally neo-conservative and manageable candidate than the disruptive billionaire, who spent virtually the whole of his four years in office fighting the intelligence community, the Pentagon, Democrats and members of his own party.
On Wednesday, President Biden said he would be interested and willing to run again in 2024, health permitting, and stressed that the prospect of a rematch against Trump would only make him more eager for the fight.
23 December 2021, 02:57 GMT
Trump maintains that Democrats cheated to get him out of a second term in the 2020 election, citing alleged rigged voting machines, late-night mail-in ballot vote dumps, and other suspected frauds. State courts have refused to hear the former president’s claims. Last December, the Supreme Court dismissed a motion by the State of Texas to investigate suspected fraud in half a dozen swing states.
Biden defeated Trump in 2020, receiving 51.3 percent of the popular vote compared with Trump’s 46.9 percent, according to official results.
