Forty-two percent (42%) of voters nationwide now approve of the way President Biden is performing his job. A Scott Rasmussen national survey found that 52% disapprove and 5% are not sure.
Biden’s approval rating is down four points two weeks ago, nine points from two months ago and down 13 points from three months ago.
As the president’s ratings decline, 46% of Democrats have come to believe that things would be better today if Senator Bernie Sanders had become president instead of Joe Biden. Just 10% of Democrats disagree and believe things would be worse. 
The current totals include 23% who Strongly Approve and 41% who Strongly Disapprove. These results are by far the most negative assessments yet measured for the president.
The president does earn rave reviews from voters with a postgraduate degree. Among those with a masters or a doctorate, 68% offer their approval while only 30% disapprove.
Among all other voters, just 36% approve and 58% disapprove. This includes voters with a bachelor’s degree, some college, and no college.
The gap between those with a postgraduate degree and the rest of the nation is found on a variety of issues. For example, among all voters, 34% agree that “The only way to save the planet is for the government to impose strict mandates and regulations on the way people live and the amount of energy they use.” Most (57%) disagree.
But things look different among those with high levels of formal education. Most voters with a postgraduate degree (55%) agree that, to save the planet, there is a need for strict government rules on lifestyles and energy use. However, by a 61% to 30% margin, all other voters reject that view.
It is likely that the president’s numbers will rebound somewhat as the withdrawal from Afghanistan moves further behind us. However, there is no way to tell at this moment how fully his approval ratings will recover. Presidents Obama and Trump both spent most of their first term with Job Approval ratings below 50%.
In addition to Afghanistan and the Southern border, pessimism about the pandemic is growing again. Just 25% of voters believe the worst is behind us. That’s down 31 points over the past three months and the lowest level of optimism measured since the vaccines became available.
On the policy front, 57% of voters believe that shutting down businesses and locking down society did more harm than good.
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Note: Neither Scott Rasmussen, ScottRasmussen.com, nor RMG Research, Inc. have any affiliation with Rasmussen Reports. While Scott Rasmussen founded that firm, he left more than seven years ago and has had no involvement since that time.
Methodology
The survey of 1,200 Registered Voters was conducted by Scott Rasmussen using a mixed mode approach from September 2-5, 2021. Field work for the survey was conducted by RMG Research, Inc. Most respondents were contacted online or via text while 151 were contacted using automated phone polling techniques. Online respondents were selected from a list of Registered Voters and through a process of Random Digital Engagement. Certain quotas were applied, and the sample was lightly weighted by geography, gender, age, race, education, internet usage, and political party to reasonably reflect the nation’s population of Registered Voters. Other variables were reviewed to ensure that the final sample is representative of that population.
The margin of sampling error for the full sample is +/- 2.8 percentage points.
