CNN’s senior political data reporter Harry Enten this weekend examined the current stark differences in polling for outgoing President Joe Biden and returning President-elect Donald Trump, ahead of the latter’s second inauguration on Monday.
While Trump is at the moment enjoying one of highest polling numbers ever, said Enten, Biden’s job approval rating ahead of his departure from the White House is “historically low” and “historically awful.”
An average of polls on presidents who lost or didn’t run for reelection, Biden’s 38% is “actually lower” than Trump’s at the end of his first term “when everyone was saying Trump’s political career was over,” said Enten.
“Biden came in to end the Donald Trump reign in this country […] and all that’s ended up happening is that Joe Biden has managed to end up at a lower approval rating at the end of his first term than any president on record,” he continued.
Enten then compared polling on whether a president was a good or great president at the end of their terms. Obama in 2017 had 52% and Trump in 2021 had 36%, he noted.
Biden, however, currently has 25%.
“Look at how low Joe Biden is. My goodness gracious,” said Enten. “You can’t really get lower than 25% […] because the bottom line is there’s going to be a bunch of Democrats who would say that Biden was a good or great president, no matter what he did, but yet it’s only a quarter of the country who believes that Joe Biden was a good or great president.”
The “bottom line,” added Enten, is that Biden “goes out a very unpopular man at the end of a 50-plus year political career.”
Watch the full analysis here: