President Joe Biden’s approval rating is sinking in the wake of the chaotic and deadly Afghanistan pullout, a new poll showed Thursday.
The Marist poll found Biden’s approval slid to 43% — down 6 percentage points from a July survey and the lowest mark for Biden since he took office, NPR reported.
The news outlet said the drop was fueled largely by independents; just 36% approve of the job Biden’s doing, a 10-point drop; 85% of Democrats approve, a 5-point drop, and 5% of Republicans approve, a 1-point dip.
The poll found 41% of adults strongly disapprove of the job Biden’s doing, similar to the number who disapproved of former President Donald Trump.
In a breakdown, the poll also found:
- 61% disapprove of Biden’s handling of the Afghan withdrawal.
- 71% think the war in Afghanistan was a failure, with 38% believing the United States should have withdrawn but left some troops, 37% thinking it should have been a complete pullout, and 10% saying no troops should be withdrawn.
- 29% of respondents think the U.S. has a duty to continue its involvement in Afghanistan; 61% think it needs to be up to Afghans to determine their future without U.S. involvement.
- 73% say they support allowing refugees to come to the United States, with 49% of Republicans approving of refugees coming to the United States, while 44% do not.
- 44% think the nation is less safe than it was before 9/11 — including two-thirds of Republicans; 30% say it’s safer and 25% say it’s about the same.
The telephone survey’s margin of error of the full sample was plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.
The approval slide comes just days after a Morning Consult poll that found Biden’s approval rating sank to 48% in the wake of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
A graph from the polling indicates that this is the first time in Biden’s presidency when more voters disapprove, at 49%, than approve of him, at 48%, due in part, to the Afghan withdrawal, that survey showed.
