Biden/Harris announce their re-election bid for 2024.
By Jim Ellis — Tuesday, April 25, 2023
Presidency
Biden/Harris Announce: Challenges Ahead? — On the four-year anniversary of announcing his victorious candidacy in 2019, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris declared they will run for re-election today.
With questions surrounding his personal longevity – currently at 80 years of age, Biden is already the oldest individual to occupy the office – the president plans to adopt the theme of ‘needing more time to finish the job’ that he originally outlined when he embarked upon his 2020 national campaign.
The recent NBC News poll, however, suggests that he will have some challenges in convincing voters to award him with a second term.
The NBC survey (April 14-18; 1,000 US adults; 800 US registered voters; live interview) begins with testing President Biden’s job approval. We see only 41 percent approving of his performance in office (15 percent strongly approve; 26 percent somewhat approve) and 54 percent expressing a negative opinion (45 percent strongly disapprove; nine percent somewhat disapprove).
The most troubling segment from the president’s perspective is his strong approval versus strong disapproval ratio, which is only 1:3 (15 percent to 45 percent), and negative intensity is always a clear warning sign.
Drilling down further into Biden’s job approval scores, the NBC pollsters asked about his performance within two specific issue areas, the economy and race relations.
As has been the case since August of 2021 in NBC polling, the president is upside-down regarding his handling of the US economy. In this current survey, only 38 percent approve of how he has managed the economy, while 58 percent disapprove. Though these ratings are poor, the current figures are an improvement over his nadir, which occurred in March of 2022 (33:63 percent).