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Joe Biden's net approval rating has slumped by nearly four points during the first half of 2023, according to data from polling analysis website FiveThirtyEight.
The analysis indicates Biden has gone from a net approval rating of -8.0 on January 1 to -11.9 on June 27, a fall of 3.9 points. However, he hasn't fallen to the level of his lowest point, when he had an approval rating of -19.7 in July 2022, according to the website.
In April, Biden formally announced he is seeking a second term in the White House, with polling showing he is the firm frontrunner to be the Democrats' 2024 presidential candidate, potentially setting up a rematch against Donald Trump. Thus Biden's personal popularity is likely to play a key role in determining who serves as president from January 2025 onwards.
FiveThirtyEight's data is calculated by combining recent polls, whilst artificially "accounting for each poll's quality, recency, sample size and partisan lean."
Speaking to Newsweek, Mary Radcliffe, a senior research assistant at FiveThirtyEight, explained which polls are included within the data.
She said: "Polls within 30 days are considered, but the older the poll is, the less influence it will have on the average, and that decay is pretty significant, since both the modeling technique (local polynomial regression) and the averaging of different bandwidths serve to downweight older polls."
Newsweek has also contacted the White House for comment by email.
Biden's approval rating means he is less popular than Trump was at this stage in his presidency, according to FiveThirtyEight analysis. The website calculated Trump's net approval as -10.4 after 889 days in the White House, making him 0.5 percent more popular than Biden.
By contrast, Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush were on -0.8 and 31.4 at this stage into their first presidency, with the latter receiving a dramatic polling boost following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
The FiveThirtyEight analysis last gave Biden a positive net approval rating, of 0.3, on August 29, 2021. The president's approval slumped dramatically in August and early September 2021, coinciding with the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.
Biden's son, Hunter Biden, agreed to a plea deal last week with U.S. Attorney David Weiss which will avoid him facing any prison time. Under the agreement, Hunter Biden pled guilty to federal misdemeanor counts for failure to pay income tax, and admit to illegal possession of a firearm while a drug user.
In response, the White House commented: "The President and First Lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life. We will have no further comment."
Speaking to CBS News on Tuesday, IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley, who was involved in the Hunter Biden investigation, claimed his team was prevented from taking "certain investigatory steps" in the case, which "could have led us to President Biden."
About the writer
James Bickerton is a Newsweek U.S. News reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is on covering news and politics ... Read more