Support for President Biden slipped below 50 percent, according to a new poll released Sunday, which found he is underwater with Americans over his chaotic handling of the evacuation of US citizens from Afghanistan and rising COVID cases.
The 49 percent job-approval rating and 48 percent disapproval rating in the NBC News poll are a drastic drop from the 53 percent approval rating and 39 percent disapproval rating he received in the survey in April.
“The promise of April has led to the peril of August,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted the poll with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.
Separately, according to the survey, 60 percent of the respondents disapprove of Biden’s handling of Afghanistan, while 25 percent approve.
On COVID, 53 percent approve and 44 percent disapprove.
But that’s a drop from April when 69 percent approved and 27 percent disapproved of his response to the coronavirus.
The NBC News survey tracks recent polls that found Biden’s approval numbers lagging.
A RealClearPolitics average of national polls puts Biden’s approval rating at 47.8 percent and his disapproval rating at 48.6 percent.
And a Reuters/Ipsos snap poll taken last weekend when the Taliban stormed into Kabul and took over Afghanistan showed that Biden’s job approval rating plummeted 7 percentage points – to the lowest level of his presidency.
46 percent of Americans approved of his performance.
Two days earlier, his approval rating was at 53 percent.
On Friday, a Rasmussen Reports survey found that fewer than 40 percent of likely voters believe Biden is carrying out the duties of the presidency.
Just 39 percent said they thought that Biden was “doing the job of president,” and 51 percent said they believed that “others are making decisions” for him.
And 52 percent said they were “not confident” that the 78-year-old commander-in-chief was physically and mentally up to the job, while 46 percent said they were “confident.”
The surveys were conducted as images from Afghanistan show the chaos near Hamid Karzai International Airport on the outskirts of Kabul and Americans and Afghans at risk of reprisals by the Taliban are harassed, threatened and sometimes beaten by the insurgent fighters as they try to make their way through number checkpoints to get to the airport.
