President Joe Biden's approval ratings remain stubbornly low even in the Democratic strongholds of New York and California, new polls have found.
A majority of New York state residents don't rate the president's job performance as "good," according to a Siena College Research Institute study released on Tuesday. Just 25 percent of respondents considered Biden's job performance "good" while 38 percent said it was "poor."
The commander-in-chief's national approval rating has been in negative territory since August 30 and several recent polls suggest there is not likely to be a rapid improvement as the U.S. heads toward crucial midterm elections.
When Siena College, based in Loudonville, New York, asked respondents to rate the job President Biden is doing, 11 percent opted for "excellent."
Another 25 percent said Biden was doing a "fair" job while just 1 percent said they didn't know or had no opinion. The poll was conducted from February 14 to 17 among 803 registered voters in New York state and had an overall margin of error of +/-3.9 percent.
The poll also asked respondents whether they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Biden and recorded an even split, with 48 percent saying favorable and 48 percent unfavorable.
However, the unfavorable figure is the highest in Siena College's monthly poll since the president came to office last year. January's survey found that 52 percent of New York state residents had a favorable opinion of Biden, while 42 percent chose unfavorable.
New York has long been a deep blue state and Biden won it in 2020 with 60.9 percent of the vote to Donald Trump's 37.7 percent. No Republican presidential candidate has carried New York since 1984.
In California—a state that Biden won with 63.5 percent in 2020—a UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll published on February 16 has found that 48 percent of residents disapprove of Biden, while 47 percent approve of the job he's doing.
The UC Berkeley poll was conducted from February 3 to 10 among 8,937 California registered voters and had an estimated margin of error of +/-2 percent.
In July 2021, the same poll found that Biden had 59 percent approval in California compared to 37 percent disapproval. The state has not backed a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.
Although the allocation of Electoral College votes is changing for 2024 based on the results of the 2020 census, New York and California remain the reliably blue states with the most Electoral College votes. California will have 54 votes up for grabs and New York will have 28 at the next presidential election.
Newsweek has contacted the California Democratic Party and the New York State Democratic Party for comment.
Poll tracker FiveThirtyEight tracks Biden's approval based on a large number of surveys and its own system of pollster rating. On February 22, it gave the president an approval rating of 42.3 percent, while disapproval stood at 52.9 percent.
All these ratings may prove significant in November's midterms, when Republicans are aiming to take back the House of Representatives and the Senate. Biden's record will be a key factor in GOP campaigns and if the party takes one or both chambers of Congress, it will be able to stymie the president's agenda for the following two years.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
About the writer
Darragh Roche is a U.S. News Reporter based in Limerick, Ireland. His focus is reporting on U.S. politics. He has ... Read more
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