By Aamer Madhani and Hannah Fingerhut | The Associated Press

January 20, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ends his first year in the White House with a clear majority of Americans for the first time disapproving of his handling of the presidency in the face of an unrelenting pandemic and roaring inflation, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

More Americans disapprove than approve of how Biden is handling his job as president, 56% to 43%. As of now, just 28% of Americans say they want Biden to run for reelection in 2024, including only 48% of Democrats.

Asked on Wednesday at a wide-ranging news conference about his flagging popularity, Biden responded, “I don’t believe the polls.”

It’s a stark reversal from early in Biden’s presidency.

In July, 59% of Americans said they approved of Biden’s job performance in an AP-NORC poll. His approval rating dipped to 50% by late September in the aftermath of the chaotic and bloody U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and amid surging coronavirus infections and the administration’s fitful efforts to push economic, infrastructure and tax policies through Congress.

The latest poll shows that Americans’ confidence in Biden’s handling of the pandemic — seen as a strength early in his administration — has further eroded as the omicron variant strains the health care system and further exhausts an American electorate that had hoped life would be back to a semblance of normalcy by now.

Just 45% say they approve of Biden’s handling of COVID-19, down from 57% in December and from 66% in July 2021.

Americans are even more downbeat about his handling of the economy, with just 37% approving. Growing angst about his economic policies comes as inflation rose at its fastest pace in nearly 40 years last month, a 7% spike from a year earlier that is increasing household expenses and eating into wage gains.

Joyce Bowen, 61, of Knoxville, Tennessee, said Biden deserves credit for encouraging Americans to get vaccinated, but she expressed frustration about the administration’s response to soaring inflation.

The part-time cleaner at a public library said she and her older brother, who she helps support, have been eating less meat to offset rising grocery costs and intermittent spikes at the gas pump that have whittled the purchasing power of her $754 biweekly paycheck.

“It’s just hard to keep food on the table and gas in the tank,” said Bowen, who voted for Biden but said she’d prefer he didn’t run again in 2024.

Only about a quarter were very confident that Biden “has the mental capability to serve effectively as president” or “is healthy enough to serve effectively as president.” Close to half are not confident in Biden’s mental capability or health.

Asked by a reporter at Wednesday’s news conference about other polling that shows a significant percentage of Americans had concerns about Biden’s mental health, the president shrugged off those findings.

Gary Cameron, 66, of Midwest City, Oklahoma, said the president’s verbal gaffes and age — at 79 Biden is the oldest U.S. president in history — don’t give him confidence that Biden has the skill or energy to pull the country out of its malaise.

“Whenever he does a speech on television, in your mind, you’re thinking ‘God, is this guy even going to get through this this speech?’” said Cameron, an independent who voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

Other respondents said that Biden’s age — and life experience that’s come with it — has proven to be an asset.

Nicole Jensen-Oost, 79, of Plano, Texas, said that Biden has demonstrated leadership and empathy through the pandemic by speaking of his own personal grief.

Biden frequently raises the deaths of his first wife and a daughter in a 1972 car crash as well as the loss of an adult son who died of cancer as he has sought to reassure Americans who have lost loved ones to the virus.

“This man has heart,” said Jensen-Oost, a Democrat and among the minority of respondents who said Biden is healthy enough to serve effectively as president. “He’s compassionate and the country needs that right now. We didn’t see a lot of compassion in the previous four years.”

The poll shows only about a quarter of Americans think the phrase “strong leader” describes Biden very well, while about that many say it’s a somewhat good description. Roughly half say he is not a strong leader. Views of Biden’s understanding of “the needs and problems of people like you” are similar.

Just 16% think Biden’s presidency has made the country more united; 43% think it’s more divided.

Harlan Epstein, of Cleveland, didn’t vote for Biden but was hopeful that the 46th president, who sold himself to American voters as a consensus builder, would govern from the ideological middle.

But Epstein, an independent, said Biden’s push for a $2 trillion climate and social services spending bill and his effort to force larger employers to require their workers to get vaccinated or undergo regular testing have undercut Biden’s centrist reputation.

“He’s got to tamp down his far-left wing and start focusing on moderate policies,” Epstein said.

Some on the left have also been frustrated with Biden.

The president’s first-year legislative victories included passage of a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package and a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, but he failed to win passage of his signature domestic spending initiative.

Zachary Lindahl, 34, of Raleigh, North Carolina, said he was disappointed that Biden has been unable to pass the spending package dubbed “Build Back Better,” as Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona balk at the costs and scope.

“It started off well with them passing the $1,400 checks,” said Lindahl, referring to stimulus payments that were part of the coronavirus relief package passed early in Biden’s term. “But as time went on, it’s been just more of the status quo. Any big idea, they are willing to compromise it down until there is no longer anything there.”

Not all is lost for Biden: Many continue to be at least somewhat positive toward the president, his character and his governing.

The new AP-NORC poll shows Biden is in a better position than Trump was at a similar point in his presidency. In February of 2018, just 35% of Americans said they approved of Trump,

Overall, though, 28% of Americans say they have “a great deal of confidence” in Biden to effectively manage the White House, down from 44% who said that one year ago, just after Biden took office. Another 33% say they have some confidence, while 38% say they have hardly any confidence in Biden to manage the executive branch.

Rev. Joseph Courtney, 32, an Episcopal chaplain in Los Angeles, said that Biden in some ways has been pretty much the president he expected, bringing a measure of confidence to the electorate by empowering experts and scientists in the country’s battle against the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic.

But Courtney said that Biden has yet to deliver on his promise to build consensus with Republicans or even some of the more conservative lawmakers in his Democratic party. Biden on the campaign trail said that his experience over 36 years in the Senate — and eight years as vice president — would help him rebuild Washington’s “broken” politics.

“He just keeps getting railroaded time and time again,” Courtney said. “I don’t understand specifically what he’s adding to the presidency that would make me want to support him running another term.”

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,161 adults was conducted Jan. 13-18 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

By Seth Borenstein and Hannah Fingerhut | The Associated Press

January 26, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans’ faith in science is falling as Democrats rely on it even more, with a trust gap in science and medicine widening substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, new survey data shows.

It’s the largest gap in nearly five decades of polling by the General Social Survey, a widely respected trend survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago that has been measuring confidence in institutions since 1972.

That is unsurprising to more than a dozen scientists reached for comment by The Associated Press, but it concerns many of them.

“We are living at a time when people would rather put urine or cleaning chemicals in their body than scientifically vetted vaccines,” University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd told the AP in an email. “That is a clear convergence of fear, lack of critical thinking, confirmation bias and political tribalism.”

Science used to be something all Americans would get behind, Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley said.

“But we now see it falling prey to the great partisan divide,” he said. “The world of science should be a meeting house where right and left can agree on data. Instead, it’s becoming a sharp razor’s edge of conflict.”

Overall, 48% of Americans say they have “a great deal” of confidence in the scientific community, the 2021 General Social Survey data shows. Sixty-four percent of Democrats say that, compared with roughly half as many Republicans, 34%. The gap was much smaller in 2018, when 51% of Democrats and 42% of Republicans had high confidence.

The poll also found a gap emerging on confidence in medicine, driven primarily by increasing confidence among Democrats. Forty-five percent of Democrats said they had a great deal of confidence in medicine, compared with 34% of Republicans.

The deepening polarization was not evident for other institutions asked about on the poll, according to Jennifer Benz, deputy director of The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

“It’s certainly plausible that this is a result of how politicized the pandemic became in the months between when it emerged and when the survey ran,” Benz said. “It is definitely a stark change for these particular trends on confidence in scientific leaders and leaders in medicine, to see this degree of polarization.”

The data suggest Republicans and Democrats are following the cues of their leaders, said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

“We’ve seen so much criticism (and worse) leveled at medical experts since the beginning of the pandemic from the former president, other Republican leaders and the conservative media, and just the opposite from the current president, Democratic leaders, and the mainstream and liberal media,” Leiserowitz told the AP in an email.

Kelvin Droegemeier, former science adviser to President Donald Trump, said he thinks the pandemic increased the general public’s insight into how scientific research works but the ever-evolving science probably seemed chaotic at times and the urgency of the pandemic complicated policymaking.

“We hear ‘follow the science,’ but which results? The challenge lies in how to best use the scientific results, recognizing that what appears to be an ‘answer’ one day may be overturned, wholly or partly, another day,” Droegemeier told the AP in an email.

That messiness, sometimes weak communication and political philosophies play into the trust gap, said Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences, which was set up by President Abraham Lincoln to offer the federal government expert advice.

Scientists and policy makers tend to be conservative — not politically but in terms of being cautious and wary of risk — pushing safety, masks and vaccines while “Republicans as a group value individual liberty,” McNutt said.

“So no wonder that Republicans are less supportive of the scientifically conservative decisions in the face of uncertainty,” she told the AP in an email.

John Holdren, who was President Barack Obama’s science adviser, said he blames GOP leaders’ “nonstop denial and deception.”

The consequence of declining trust in the scientific community among Republicans is clear: AP-NORC polling shows Republicans continue to be less likely than Democrats to be vaccinated.

Sudip Parikh, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general science organization, said it’s clear that science has become a wedge issue for many politicians. Some have tied themselves to it, he said, and others have seen value in shooting at it “because it helps them politically.”

“It’s easy in the abstract to trust science,” Parikh said. “When there are things that come out of that the data that challenge what you are hoping the policy answer would be, you get divergence from wanting to trust the science.”

Parikh said he found it ironic that much of the distrust in science is spread by technology — social media, smartphones — that only exists because of scientific advances.

Famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson agreed: “The struggle continues, trying to get the general public to embrace all of the science the way they unwittingly embrace the science in their smartphones.”

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The General Social Survey has been conducted since 1972 by NORC at the University of Chicago. Sample sizes for each year’s survey vary from about 1,500 to about 4,000 adults, with margins of error falling between plus or minus 2 percentage points and plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The most recent survey was conducted Dec. 1, 2020, through May 3, 2021, and includes interviews with 4,032 American adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

By Sara Burnett and Hannah Fingerhut | The Associated Press

November 3, 2021

Republican Glenn Youngkin mobilized voters concerned about education and race, while making small gains with suburban voters and other key groups to help his party rebound from Donald Trump’s poor showing in Virginia last year and win the governor’s race.

The former private equity executive’s victory came even as Trump remains broadly unpopular in the commonwealth. Youngkin managed to keep the former president at arm’s length without angering Trump’s base. A year after Democrat Joe Biden dispatched Trump in Virginia by 10 percentage points, Youngkin’s supporters, not Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s, were more fired up — 74% of them said they were “extremely” interested in the election, compared with 63% who voted for McAuliffe, according to AP VoteCast.

Here’s a snapshot of what mattered to voters, based on preliminary results from AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 2,500 voters in Virginia conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.

BIG COMEBACK BUILT ON SMALL GAINS

Both Democrats and Republicans pulled together familiar coalitions. Men, rural and small town voters and white evangelicals were squarely in Youngkin’s corner, while McAuliffe was the choice for Black voters, moderates, college graduates and voters under 45. Women were only slightly more likely to back the Democrat than the Republican, 52% to 47%.

Republican Glenn Youngkin mobilized voters concerned about education and race, while making small gains with suburban voters and other key groups to help his party rebound from Donald Trump’s poor showing in Virginia last year and win the governor’s race.

The former private equity executive’s victory came even as Trump remains broadly unpopular in the commonwealth. Youngkin managed to keep the former president at arm’s length without angering Trump’s base. A year after Democrat Joe Biden dispatched Trump in Virginia by 10 percentage points, Youngkin’s supporters, not Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s, were more fired up — 74% of them said they were “extremely” interested in the election, compared with 63% who voted for McAuliffe, according to AP VoteCast.

Here’s a snapshot of what mattered to voters, based on preliminary results from AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 2,500 voters in Virginia conducted for The Associated Press by NORC at the University of Chicago.

BIG COMEBACK BUILT ON SMALL GAINS

Both Democrats and Republicans pulled together familiar coalitions. Men, rural and small town voters and white evangelicals were squarely in Youngkin’s corner, while McAuliffe was the choice for Black voters, moderates, college graduates and voters under 45. Women were only slightly more likely to back the Democrat than the Republican, 52% to 47%.

About half said they had a “very” unfavorable opinion of Trump, but only about 3 in 10 said the same about Youngkin.

Close to half of Virginia voters said Youngkin supports Trump too much, while roughly as many said he supports Trump the right amount. Most Youngkin voters — about 8 in 10 — said the candidate supports Trump the right amount, but about 1 in 10 said he supports the former president too much. About that many said Youngkin supports Trump too little.

MCAULIFFE GETS MORE BLAME FOR ATTACKS

Overall, about half of Virginia voters said they had a favorable opinion of McAuliffe, while about half held an unfavorable view.

In a very contentious race, McAuliffe appears to have taken more of the blame for the tone. Most voters thought the gubernatorial campaign featured unfair attacks from at least one candidate, but voters were somewhat more likely to say only McAuliffe attacked Youngkin unfairly than the other way around. Close to 2 in 10 voters said both attacked unfairly.

SCHOOL DEBATE DECISIVE FOR MANY

Schools became a major focus of the governor’s race for Youngkin, who localized a nationwide issue after McAuliffe said during a debate that parents shouldn’t “be telling schools what they should teach.”

About a quarter of Virginia voters said the debate over teaching critical race theory in schools was the single most important factor in their vote for governor, and 72% of those voters backed Youngkin.

Most Youngkin voters — about three-quarters — said the public school system in Virginia is focusing on racism too much. Among McAuliffe voters, just over half said the focus is too little, while about a third said it’s about right.

McAuliffe voters had concerns about schools, too — but they were more likely to be focused on COVID-19 precautions. Roughly a quarter of all voters identified the debate over handling COVID-19 in schools as the most important factor in their vote, and 63% of them backed McAuliffe.

About 6 in 10 Virginia voters support mask mandates for both teachers and students in K-12 schools and COVID-19 vaccine mandates for teachers. Those voters were more likely to be McAuliffe supporters. Only about a third of Youngkin backers supported each policy.

TOP ISSUE

Thirty-five percent of Virginia voters said the economy and jobs was the most important issue facing the state, while 17% named COVID-19 and 15% chose education.

Health care, climate change, racism, immigration, abortion and law enforcement were all lower.

Voters who ranked the economy and education as the top issues were more likely to back Youngkin over McAuliffe. Voters who identified COVID-19 as the top issue supported McAuliffe. McAuliffe also earned the majority of the roughly 2 in 10 who ranked health care, climate change or racism as the top issue.

IS VIRGINIA’S ECONOMY SOARING OR SINKING?

Youngkin, a former private equity executive, often asserted during the campaign that Virginia’s economy was “in the ditch,” but a majority of voters disagreed. Fifty-five percent said the state’s economy is in good shape.

Youngkin argued that Virginia’s record budget surplus was the result of overtaxation as he campaigned on a promise to enact substantial tax cuts.

McAuliffe countered that the surplus was due to strong economic growth under Democratic leadership and argued that Youngkin’s opposition to abortion rights and conservative position on LGBTQ issues would hamper efforts to recruit new businesses to the commonwealth.

MORE INDECISION THAN 2020

About 6 in 10 voters said they had known all along whom they would be backing in the governor’s race. In the presidential race last year, three-quarters of Virginia voters said they knew all along.

Of the three in 10 voters who say they decided over the course of this year’s the campaign, there was a preference for Youngkin, 55% to 45%.

CONTINUED SKEPTICISM ABOUT THE VOTE COUNT

Although Virginia experienced no major issues with its vote count in 2020, only about half of voters in Virginia were “very confident” that the votes in the election for governor would be counted accurately. An additional 3 in 10 were “somewhat confident.”

Just 18% of Youngkin’s voters said they were “very confident” the vote would be counted accurately. That compared with 78% of McAuliffe voters.

Still, overall confidence is stronger among voters now compared with last year’s presidential election: Just 25% then said they were very confident votes would be counted accurately.

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AP VoteCast is a survey of the American electorate conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for Fox News and The Associated Press. The survey of 2,655 voters in Virginia was conducted for seven days, concluding as polls closed. Interviews were conducted in English or Spanish. The survey combines a random sample of registered voters drawn from the state voter file and self-identified registered voters selected from nonprobability online panels. The margin of sampling error for voters is estimated to be plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. Find more details about AP VoteCast’s methodology at https://www.ap.org/votecast.