President Biden is leaving office with negative job and character ratings, as voters continue to give the economy bad marks — and say the White House has failed to make improvements.
A new Fox News poll shows twice as much as many think Biden administration It has made the economy worse, not better, 52% to 28%. Additionally, nearly all voters, 89%, say they are either very or very concerned about inflation — up from 83% at the start of his term (2021).
Overall, 70% say the economy is in bad shape. While that's better than the high of Biden's tenure of 84% who rated him unfavorably in July 2022, it's also back to how things were at the beginning of his presidency when 69% said the same.
“Despite presiding over the world's strongest post-pandemic economic recovery and making historic investments in infrastructure that will produce millions of new jobs over the next decade, voters clearly judge Biden's efforts on the economy to be producing results,” says Democratic pollster Chris Anderson. “Inverse.” His company, Beacon Research, conducts polls on Fox News alongside Republican Daron Shaw. “Time will tell whether history will judge him differently.”
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Only 13% of voters say they are getting ahead financially. Three times that number, 42%, feel they are falling behind — that's a 15-point increase from the 27% who felt this way nearly four years ago.
Part of this increase is driven by Democrats, who are more likely to say they are lagging behind today: 38% versus 19% in June 2021.
And about 6 in 10 Democrats I agree with 8 in 10 Republicans and 7 in 10 independents that the economy is only in fair or bad shape.
“If the election is mostly about how voters think the incumbent party is handling the economy, it's easy to see why Democrats will lose the 2024 election,” Shaw says. “Unfortunately for Biden, he remains ineffective in demonstrating that his policies have improved the bottom line, even among his base.”
With Biden gone, 42% of voters approved of his job performance — just 2 percentage points above his record low.
Biden's approval is less than Barack Obama (57%) and Bill Clinton (62%) at the end of their presidency, but higher than George W. Bush (34%). About 47% supported Donald Trump at the end of his first term.
Biden's highest approval rating, 56%, came six months into his presidency (June 2021). His lowest approval rating, 40%, came at three points during his term (July 2022, November 2023, and October 2024).
The average career rating for his entire presidency is 44% approve versus 55% disapprove.
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80% of Democrats approve of Biden leaving, as do 35% of independents and 9% of Republicans. By comparison, 100 days into his presidency, 95% of Democrats approved, as did 42% of independents and 14% of Republicans.
Views of Biden as a person are the opposite of what they were when he was elected. At the end of 2020, about 59% of voters had a positive opinion of him, while 39% had a negative opinion. The final reading shows that 40% view it positively and 59% view it negatively.
This makes him less popular Trump At the end of his first term (45% supported, 54% opposed), and Obama (60-39%), Bush (49-46%), and Clinton (48-46%) at the end of their terms.
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Trump's current positive rating tells the story of this moment: 50% of voters have a positive view of him, while 50% view him unfavorably.
The Fox News poll was conducted January 10-13, 2025, under the supervision of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R), and includes interviews with a sample of 922 registered voters randomly selected from the National Voter File. Respondents spoke with live interviewers on landlines (114) and cell phones (638) or completed the survey online after receiving a text message (170). Results based on the full sample have a sampling error of ±3 percentage points. The sampling error associated with the results between subgroups is higher. In addition to sampling error, the wording and order of questions can affect the results. Weights are generally applied to the age, race, education, and region variables to ensure that the demographics of respondents are representative of the number of registered voters. Sources for developing weight targets include the American Community Survey, Fox News voter analysis, and voter file data.
Fox News' Victoria Palara contributed to this report.
