After the White House dismissed a poll that showed the lowest approval ratings for President Joe Biden a year since he took office, a daily survey released by another organization is the latest indicator of his waning popularity.
On Thursday, White House deputy chief of staff Jennifer O’Malley Dillon questioned the findings of a Quinnipiac University survey which gave Biden a 33 percent approval rating, which was three percentage points less than ex-President Donald Trump at the one-year mark.
In a memo to Axios, O’Malley Dillon said that the average of all public polls on the website FiveThirtyEight gave Biden a 43 percent approval rating and that Quinnipiac’s findings were “drastically different from all other recent polls.”
Malley Dillon called Quinnipiac’s poll an “outlier,” criticizing its use of “random digit dialing” which she said made it easier for respondents to be undecided on the president’s job rating and so undercounted soft support for Biden.
In response, Quinnipiac University Poll director Doug Schwartz said “we stand by our numbers,” which also showed that 53 percent of people surveyed between January 7 and 10 disapproved of Biden, in data which sparked #LowApprovalRatingJoe to trend on Twitter.
But Rasmussen’s daily presidential tracking poll on Thursday also pointed to sinking approval ratings. It showed that 39 percent of likely U.S. voters approved of Biden’s job performance while 59 percent disapproved.
While there was no margin of error given, this was Rasmussen’s lowest approval and highest disapproval rating for Biden since he took office. The conservative polling company gets a B rating from FiveThirtyEight compared with Quinnipiac’s A minus rating.
Biden has faced a turnaround in his popularity since his widely criticized withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in August. His administration’s Build Back Better agenda has also stalled in Congress.
Meanwhile, its push to increase voting rights suffered a blow when Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) reiterated her support for the 60-vote filibuster—the biggest obstacle for Democrats to pass the legislation.
Also on Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected Biden’s plan to force companies with more than 100 employees to impose vaccine mandates, though the justices did back similar requirements for medical facilities getting Medicare or Medicaid payments.
Another impact on Biden are sky-high COVID infection rates due to the Omicron variant and criticism of delays of at-home testing kits.
“What you see in most of these polls is a real frustration and exhaustion with COVID and the fact that it’s not over,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday, “We understand that.”
Newsweek has contacted the White House for comment.
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