How Joe Biden's Approval Rating Stands as 2024 Begins

President Joe Biden is heading into an election year with an increasingly low approval rating, adding to rising concerns about whether the Democrat will be able to get a second term in the White House.

Biden's average approval rating has been below 50 percent, showing that more people are unhappy with his job as president than happy, for more than two years now, with voters expressing issues with his handling of key issues such as the economy, immigration and foreign policy.

Biden had been recording approval ratings around the mid-50s for the majority of his first year in office. However, Biden was heavily criticized for the U.S.'s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, when more than 180 people, including 13 U.S. service personnel, were killed in a suicide bombing at Kabul airport just prior to the Taliban retaking the country. Following withdrawal, Biden's approval rating fell below 50 percent, and he has not been above that level since.

According to FiveThirtyEight's live average poll tracker, Biden has a net disapproval rating of 16.5 points—55.4 percent disapproval and 38.9 percent approval— as of December 17, only just above his all-time lowest average approval rating of 37.6 percent which was recorded earlier in the month.

By comparison, Biden's expected Republican challenger in the 2024 Election, Donald Trump, who only managed a single term in office, had an all-time low average approval rating of 36.4 percent in December 2017. By the time Trump left office in January 2021, days after the Capitol riot, Trump's average approval rating was 38.6 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight, only just below what Biden is recording in mid-December 2023.

There have been other surveys that paint a bleak picture for the 81-year-old Biden, who has frequently faced concerns about his age and whether he should attempt a second term in office, as well as signs that Democratic voters would prefer another candidate to run in 2024.

According to a recent exclusive survey of eligible voters in Michigan by Redfield and Wilton Strategies for Newsweek, nearly half (49 percent) of voters in the key swing state say they disapprove of the president's job performance, while 35 percent approve.

A Wall Street Journal poll published December 9 showed that voters prefer Trump for president over Biden in both a hypothetical head-to-head race by four points (47 percent to 43 percent), and that voters overwhelmingly believe the former president would be better than Biden at handling several key issues could decide the 2024 election, including the economy, inflation, and protecting the southern border.

In November, a New York Times/Siena College poll showed Trump beating Biden in five key swing states heading into next year's election: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, all of which Biden had won in 2020.

Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic strategist based in New York, said what is particularly worrying for Biden is his poll numbers despite the president having a number of positive wins over the past 12 months.

"The improving U.S. economy—inflation down, interest rates down, jobs up—should be boosting President Biden, but they're not," Sheinkopf told Newsweek.

"Part of it is age and generational conflict. The other part? A sense that things are out of control and younger voters and African Americans showing less intensity of support for the president."

The White House has been contacted for comment via email.

Heading into the election year, Biden suggested that democracy itself is at stake in 2024, and voters should do all that it takes so that Trump, who has been accused of mimicking fascist dictators with his rhetoric, is not allowed back in the White House.

For Trump, the overwhelming frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary, there is also the looming issue of the four criminal trials where he has pleaded not guilty to a total of 91 charges. A number of polls have suggested that Republicans would not vote for Trump in November 2024 if he is a convicted felon by the time the polls open.

Trump has long denied all wrongdoing in relation to the criminal investigations and accused each one of them of being politically motivated "witch hunts" which aim to stop him from winning the election.

Michael Binder, a professor of political science at the University of North Florida, said that time is still on Biden's side to turn things around with 11 months until the election. There is also the chance that many undecided voters or those who are skeptical of Biden may eventually see the president as the better choice candidate come November 2024.

"Obviously, any elected official would prefer to have +16 job approval as opposed to +16 disapproval, but a lot can and will change over the coming year," Binder told Newsweek.

"The assessment of job approval will shift from 'how is Biden doing compared to some amorphous individualized standard ' to 'how does Biden compare to Trump.'

"At this point, Democrats can still imagine their own perfect version of a Democrat, but once Biden and Trump are the official nominees expectations change and suddenly Biden will look a lot better to Dems and anti-Trump independents and Republicans," Binder added.