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When there’s less than a week left President Biden’s tenure in the White House sunsets, a new national poll indicates that many Americans don’t think history will be kind to him.
According to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Tuesday, 44 percent of voters nationwide say history will judge Biden as a failed president, and another 27 percent say he will be judged as a fair president.
Twenty-one percent of those polled said history will see Biden as a good president, and only 5% said he will be seen as a great president.
The president’s single term in the White House ends next Monday, January 20, com President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated as Biden’s successor.
MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SAY THIS IS HOW THEY WILL SEE BIDEN’S PRESIDENCY
President Biden looks on as he speaks from the Roosevelt Room on the jobs report and the state of the economy at the White House in Washington, DC on January 10, 2025. (REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz)
However, according to the poll, 44% also say Trump will be seen by history as a failed president.
One in five say Trump, who begins his second term next week, will be seen as a great president, with 19% saying good and 27% saying he would be judged a fair president.
Trump finished his first term with approval ratings in negative territory, including a 47% approval rating Fox News poll four years ago
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However, views of Trump’s first term have risen in polls since his landslide victory in November’s presidential election over Vice President Kamala Harris. The vice president succeeded Biden in July as the Democratic standard-bearer in 2024 after the president dropped out of the race following a disastrous debate against Trump.
According to the USA Today/Suffolk poll, 52 percent of respondents say they approve of the job Trump has done during his first term in office, while 45 percent disapprove.
President-elect Donald Trump speaks to members of the media during a press conference at the Mar-a-Lago Club on January 7, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
The director of Suffolk University’s Center for Policy Research, David Paleologos, noted that the change over the past four years was particularly significant among independent voters.
“Donald Trump essentially eliminated his overwhelming negative personal popularity between December 2020 and today among independents,” Paleologos said. “Trump went from a whopping minus 22 (35% favorable ‒ 57% unfavorable) to a paltry minus 5 (42% favorable ‒ 47% unfavorable)” among the group that typically swings elections.
WHERE BIDEN COSTS IN FOX NEWS’ MOST RECENT NATIONAL POLL
Looking ahead, 31 percent said they were excited to have Trump back in the White House, and 18 percent said they were pleased. However, 12% said they were depressed and 31% fear a second Trump presidency.
President Biden speaks at a reception for new Democratic members of Congress in the State Dining Room of the White House, Sunday, January 5, 2025, in Washington, DC (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
According to the poll, 43 percent say they approve of the job Biden has done as president when he leaves office, with 54 percent disapproving.
Biden’s approval rating hovered in the low 50s during his first six months in the White House. However, the president’s numbers began to drop in August 2021 in the wake of Biden’s much-criticized handling of the turmoil. US exit from Afghanistan and after a spike in COVID-19 cases that summer, mostly among unvaccinated people.
The president’s drop in approval rating was also fueled by rising inflation, which began rising in the summer of 2021 and still remains a major concern for Americans’ pocketbooks, and increase in migrants trying to cross into the United States throughout the southern border with Mexico
Biden’s approval ratings went underwater in the fall of 2021 and never resurfaced in positive territory.
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according to the USA Today/Suffolk University poll, Nearly a quarter of respondents were undecided when asked to name Biden’s greatest accomplishment as president. Nineteen percent said to invest in infrastructure. Ten percent said they were fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, which was the top economic and health concern among Americans when Biden took office four years ago.
As for his biggest failure as president, just over three in ten said Biden delivered on immigration, with 20% offering the chaotic withdrawal of US military forces from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.
The survey polled 1,000 registered voters across the country by telephone. It was conducted on January 7-1 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
