Majority of voters say Biden made progress in summit with Putin: poll

A majority of voters in a new poll say President Biden made at least some progress during his summit this month with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Twenty-one percent of registered voters in a new Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey released exclusively to The Hill said that Biden made “meaningful” progress in the Geneva meeting, while another 31 percent said he made “some” progress.

Thirty-two percent of voters said no progress was made, and 15 percent were unsure.

Expectations for this month’s summit were kept low given the wide range of disagreements and chill relations between Washington and Moscow.

Both Biden and Putin described their meeting as professional and cordial. They discussed on several topics of contention, including cyberattacks launched by Russia-backed and Russia-based groups, the Kremlin’s poisoning and jailing of opposition leader Alexey Navalny and election interference.

Biden said after the meeting that the conversation helped identify areas of mutual interest and that he told Putin the U.S. would respond to any attempt to undermine its interests or those of its allies.

The meeting produced few concrete deliverables, but Biden and Putin did agree to resume talks on nuclear arms control.

“It’s perhaps too early to judge President Biden’s foreign policy but the summit with Vladimir Putin didn’t help the president nor do much harm. It was seen as more ceremony than substance but the public’s views are far from certain,” said pollster Mark Penn.

The new survey indicated voters want Biden to adopt a tough tone with Russia moving forward, with 72 percent considering Moscow an adversary and 59 percent saying Biden should “come down hard on Russia” when it comes to issues like cyber attacks or other issues that threaten U.S. interests.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey of 2,006 registered voters was conducted from June 15-17. It is a collaboration of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University and the Harris Poll.

The survey is an online sample drawn from the Harris Panel and weighted to reflect known demographics. As a representative online sample, it does not report a probability confidence interval.