With just a few weeks left until President Joe Biden leaves the White House and the Trump administration comes in, Americans are reflecting over the past four years, closing 2024 with a somber prognosis: they are overwhelmingly disapproving of Biden's administration and pessimistic about where the country is going.
A new Gallup Poll shows that only 19% of Americans say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., slightly lower than the 22% to 26% readings in recent months and the lowest since July. The poll was conducted between Dec. 2-18.
The survey found a partisan divide among the perceptions of satisfaction, though all have consistently decreased over the last months.
For one, Democrats' satisfaction with the direction of the country fell 19 percentage points between October and November, from 47% to 31%. At the same time, Republicans' satisfaction rose from 5% to 16%, as President-elect Donald Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration fast approaches.
A similarly downbeat perception can be seen with Americans' view of the economy. According to Gallup's Economic Confidence Index, Americans' evaluations of current economic conditions and their views of whether the economy is getting better or worse lies -14, the highest since August 2021. That is a steady improvement since 2022, where it stayed -58. Before the election, the index showed -26 confidence in October, it then jumped to -17 in the first few weeks after the election in November.
The index has a theoretical range of +100 (if all Americans rate current conditions as excellent or good and say the economy is getting better) to -100 (if all Americans rate the economy as poor and say it is getting worse).
Americans' have a similarly grim view of the Biden administration. About four in 10 Americans (39%) approve of the job Biden is doing as president, similar to the 37% he received in November and his 41% rating in late October.
Biden's current approval is similar to his numbers throughout his administration, which has ranged between 36% to 45% since January 2022. However, he hasn't had a job approval rating of 50% or better since July 2021.
A partisan divide is also evident in voters' perception of the Biden administration. The poll shows that Biden will likely leave office earning majority-level approval from a handful of U.S. subgroups, including Democrats (85%), political liberals (73%), adults with postgraduate education (55%), people of color (53%) and people with no religious affiliations (51%). By contrast, majorities of Republicans, conservatives, White adults and those without a college degree disapprove of his job performance, as do majorities of all age and income groups, according to Gallup.
The survey comes as President-elect Trump is just weeks away from re-entering the White House on Jan. 20, alongside a Congress controlled by Republicans and a Supreme Court composed primarily of conservative judges.
Although he overwhelmingly won the Electoral College back in November, claiming all of the battleground states, it remains unclear how his performance will be viewed once he is back in power. Back in 2021, when he officially left the White House, 34% of Americans approved of the job he was doing as president, the worst evaluation of his presidency. His 41% average approval rating throughout his presidency was also four points lower than for any of his predecessors in Gallup's polling era.
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