Joe Biden’s support dips as Democrats brace for election defeat

US President Joe Biden’s approval rating has slipped to 39%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll on Monday, bolstering expectations by nonpartisan election analysts that the Democratic Party will suffer a defeat in the United States. Tuesday elections (8).

The national poll, which took more than two days, found that Americans’ approval of Biden’s performance in office fell by one point, close to the lowest point in the administration.

Biden’s unpopularity helps fuel the view that Republicans will take control of the House and possibly the US Senate on Tuesday as well.

The University of Virginia Center for Politics predicted on Monday that Republicans would easily win a majority in the House of Representatives, winning 24 seats, and a slim majority in the Senate.

Control of one chamber of Congress would give Republicans the power to disrupt Biden’s legislative agenda.

Having taken office in January 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden’s tenure has been marked by the economic scars of the global health crisis, including rising inflation. This year, the approval rating was 36% in May and June.

In this week’s Reuters/Ipsos poll, about a third of respondents chose the economy as the country’s biggest problem, a much larger share than those who chose crime, which was one in ten. About one in 15 said the biggest issue was ending national abortion rights, following a June Supreme Court ruling that ended the national right to abortion.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted online in English in the United States, collected responses from 1,004 adults, including 424 Democrats and 390 Republicans, and has a credibility interval – a measure of accuracy – 4 percentage points up or down.