Democratic President Joe Biden’s poll numbers are improving, just in time for the beleaguered incumbent.
Decision Desk HQ, a renowned elections data organization, announced Monday morning that Biden’s approval rating has reached its “highest point” in its average of surveys over the last five months, with 44% approval based on 1,150 individual polls.
According to DDHQ data, Biden’s current average approval rating is lower than his peak from the previous year. This occurred in early March 2023, only weeks before a New York grand jury arrested former President Donald Trump. He received an average of 45% support.
According to The Hill/DDHQ’s graphic, Biden’s approval dropped to 38.5% on March 2, a little less than a month after then-US Special Counsel Robert Hur delivered a report claiming the president had a “poor memory.”
Hur’s assessment appeared to have a substantial impact on Biden’s polling, with survey after survey revealing that the vast majority of polled respondents believed the 81-year-old Biden lacked the mental or physical fitness required for another term in government.
Just before Hur appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12, the transcript of his conversation with the president was made available online, indicating that Hur may have exaggerated Biden’s memory impairments in his report.
That revelation, together with Biden’s highly energized State of the Union presentation, is likely to have played a significant role in the aging president’s recent polling reversal. In the 24 hours following his speech to Congress, Biden’s campaign raised more than $10 million.
Bloomberg News/Morning Consult released a series of swing state polls on Tuesday that reinforce the notion that his speech influenced his current popularity among his supporters. The surveys were performed in the days following his speech, and his popularity increased nearly instantly in the majority of important battleground states.
Biden won three swing states in 2020—Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona—by fewer than 35,000 votes, which were critical to his electoral victory over Trump. Winning those states again this year is critical for Biden.
According to Bloomberg News/Morning Consult, Biden continues to trail Trump in popularity by several percentage points in many of those crucial states, though he may be on the right track going forward.
Biden may also profit from the Republican-led House of Representatives’ current state of self-inflicted disarray, as another “motion to vacate” was recently filed against a sitting GOP speaker.
The more Biden can depict himself and Democratic candidates as the grownups in the room while legislative productivity plummets, the stronger his case for another four years in government.