President Joe Biden‘s approval rating in the past month has skyrocketed, jumping six points after massive successes in getting his legislative agenda passed. At 44%, Biden’s approval rating is now higher than the approval ratings of Donald Trump (41%), Barack Obama (43%), Bill Clinton (39%), Jimmy Carter (43%), and Ronald Reagan (41%) at this point in their presidencies.
The only Presidents who had higher job approval ratings at this point were George W. Bush (65%) and George H.W. Bush (74%), both of whom were engaged in prosecuting wars in the Middle East, and Richard Nixon (55%). Gerald Ford’s was 48% at this point in his presidency, but as an unelected president coming in after the Nixon resignation it’s a difficult comparison to weigh.
All the approval ratings above come via Gallup’s Presidential Job Approval Center and are based on the current poll number and time period for that poll. Gallup does not publish weekly presidential job numbers any more, so the Biden figure is for August 1-23, 2022. Other presidential numbers are for the polls closest to that date and week number (around 79-84 weeks in office.)
President Biden has every reason to celebrate the huge jump. In recent months he has become a historic president, battling an opposition party fresh off an attempted coup, with a cult–like leader facing possible criminal charges on a variety of potentially unlawful acts, an evenly-divided Senate, a House with only a modest majority, all at a time of nearly unprecedented crises – domestic, international, and worldwide.
Despite all that, Biden has racked up big wins on longtime Democratic goals, including taxing corporations and the ultra-wealthy, signing into law the biggest climate change bill in history, making huge inroads on reducing drug prices, working to get what is now a massive reduction in gas prices and stabilization of inflation, helping millions of veterans access care for toxin-based cancers, signing the first major gun control law in decades, maintaining and even reducing historically low unemployment while overseeing historic job and wage growth, signing the first major infrastructure bill in decades, getting America’s first Black woman justice confirmed to the Supreme Court, removing the leader of al Qaeda, strengthening and expanding NATO while supporting Ukraine after Russia attacked the sovereign nation, and more.
Yesterday, which is not included in the latest Gallup poll period, President Biden announced 20 million Americans will see their student loan debt, between $10,000 (loans) and $20,000 (Pell Grants) forgiven. Despite GOP pushback, and thanks to a White House now on offensive instead of defense, it is proving to be another major win for Biden and the Democrats.
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