Poll finds 45 percent back Biden’s handling of pandemic

A new poll is offering bad news for the White House on how voters are seeing the White House’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which President Biden has long viewed as the key issue of his presidency.

Less than half of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the NewsNation poll released Thursday.

The poll showed that only 45 percent of registered voters approve of Biden’s handling of the pandemic and 55 percent disapproved. Additionally, only 16 percent said they trusted information from the president on COVID-19 and 31 percent trust information from Anthony Fauci, the president’s top health adviser.

A slightly higher percentage — 58 percent — disapproved of Biden’s overall performance as president.

Thursday’s poll numbers follow a Quinnipiac University poll on Wednesday that found that just one-third of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing, which marks a new low for the president. 

The White House is also grappling with a dismal inflation report out on Wednesday, which said consumer prices increased 7 percent in December from the same month the previous year, representing the fastest increase in prices in nearly 40 years.

Thursday’s poll found that 92 percent of voters are concerned about inflation and when asked what was the bigger issue of concern, 45 percent said inflation, 41 percent said COVID-19, and 14 percent said unemployment. 

The poll showed that 40 percent of people thinking they are worse off financially from a year ago.

A majority of voters, 52 percent, said that they think the pandemic will never end, 30 percent said they think it will end in a year, and seven percent thought it has already ended. Eighty percent said they are still concerned about the pandemic and 20 percent were not concerned.

The NewsNation poll, conducted by Decision Desk HQ News, surveyed 1,013 registered voters on Jan. 10. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.