Biden approval rating at 39% amid economic fears; 47% ‘strongly disapprove’

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President Joe Biden said Thursday Americans were “really, really down.” He’s right about that.

A new USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll shows the country in a funk and one that sets a problematic political landscape for Democrats in the November elections that are approaching fast.

Only 39% of Americans approve of the job Biden is doing as president. A stunning 47% “strongly” disapprove; just 16% “strongly” approve. Academic studies have shown that presidential approval is one of the most reliable predictors of what happens in midterm elections, and a rating this low would traditionally signal significant losses for the president’s party. CONTINUED

Susan Page, USA Today

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Americans support student loan forgiveness, but would rather rein in college costs

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As President Biden inches toward an announcement on federal student loan forgiveness, a new NPR/Ipsos poll has found slightly more than half of Americans support what has been reported to be Biden’s likeliest path: forgiving up to $10,000 per person. But an overwhelming majority – including a majority of those with student loans – said the government should prioritize making college more affordable over forgiving existing student loans. CONTINUED

Cory Turner & Sequoia Carrillo, NPR News

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

A Republican pollster’s advice on how to talk about the gun bill

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… In the Senate Republican lunch on Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) cited recent polling conducted for a nonprofit run by a former Cornyn aide to make the case for the gun package he’s currently negotiating. We chatted with Neil Newhouse, one of the Republican pollsters who conducted the survey, about how voters feel about guns, why some popular gun policies don’t have more Republican support and his advice for how Republicans should talk about the bill. CONTINUED

Theodoric Meyer & Leigh Ann Caldwell, Washington Post

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

Biden disapproval hits new high as more Americans say they would vote for Trump

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As inflation keeps rising and recession fears loom, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll shows that Joe Biden is currently in the worst shape of his presidency.

The survey of 1,541 U.S. adults, which was conducted from June 10-13, found that if another presidential election were held today, more registered voters say they would cast ballots for Donald Trump (44%) than for Biden (42%) — even though the House Jan. 6 committee has spent the last week linking Trump to what it called a “seditious conspiracy” to overturn the 2020 election and laying the groundwork for possible criminal prosecution. CONTINUED

Andrew Romano, Yahoo News

The OPINION TODAY email newsletter is a concise daily rundown of significant new poll results and insightful analysis. It’s FREE. Sign up here: opiniontoday.substack

What the Polls Can (And Can’t) Tell Us

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For the last couple of years, I’ve stressed that when it comes to campaign polling, it’s more important to focus on the vote share each candidate is getting than it is to obsess about the margin that separates the two candidates. The fact that a candidate is ‘ahead’ of another candidate by a certain number of points is a poor metric for assessing the strength of that candidate’s chances of winning a race. …

I was reminded of how important it is to keep this “vote share vs. the margin” framing in mind as I watched political Twitter react to two recent polls taken in the battleground states of Georgia and Pennsylvania. CONTINUED

Amy Walter, Cook Political Report with Amy Walter

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Belief in God in U.S. Dips to 81%, a New Low

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The vast majority of U.S. adults believe in God, but the 81% who do so is down six percentage points from 2017 and is the lowest in Gallup’s trend. Between 1944 and 2011, more than 90% of Americans believed in God. Gallup’s May 2-22 Values and Beliefs poll finds 17% of Americans saying they do not believe in God. …

Belief in God has fallen the most in recent years among young adults and people on the left of the political spectrum (liberals and Democrats). These groups show drops of 10 or more percentage points comparing the 2022 figures to an average of the 2013-2017 polls. CONTINUED

Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup

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