President Joe Biden has ushered the historical presidential honeymoon period back in by scoring a 63 percent approval rating in a recent poll, after his predecessor Donald Trump began his own presidency with a record low 45 percent approval in 2017.
President Biden can take a measure of pride in the latest Hill/HarrisX poll, which shows that 63 percent of Americans approve of the job he’s doing in his young presidency, versus 3 percent who disapprove. It’s a jump of more than twenty points above Trump’s final average approval rating, and also eclipses Trump’s first approval polls by eighteen points.
The result is also consistent with an earlier Reuters/Ipsos poll that found 57 percent of registered voters approve of Biden, while 32 percent disapprove, and another 11 percent aren’t sure. That poll also found that only 4 percent of registered Democrats disapprove of Biden, and 67 percent of registered Republicans saying the same.
But Biden’s rating isn’t that unusual from a historical perspective. According to Gallup, the lowest opening approval rating, prior to Trump, was President Ronald Reagan’s 51 percent in 1981, and most presidents have enjoyed a significant head start with voters. George W. Bush began his presidency at 57 percent, and President Barack Obama enjoyed a 67 percent approval rating in his first Gallup tracking poll.
Trump finished his presidency with the lowest average approval rating in Gallup’s history, and was also the only president never to reach 50 percent in the survey — but he also finished tied for the all-time high approval among Republicans. That polarization, in addition to events on the ground, could have an impact on the durability of Biden’s honeymoon period.