A solid majority of Washingtonians approve of President Joe Biden’s job performance after more than one hundred days on the job, a new survey conducted for the Northwest Progressive Institute has found.
54% of respondents told NPI’s pollster that they approved of Biden’s job performance, while 41% disapproved. 5% said they were not sure.
Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris easily carried Washington State in the 2020 presidential election, with nearly 58% backing the Democratic ticket. This continued a long trend of support for Democratic nominees from Washington voters. The state hasn’t backed a Republican since Reagan in 1984.
Biden and Harris took office in the midst of incredibly difficult circumstances.
The new administration inherited a country slammed by the worst public health catastrophe in a century, a struggling economy, a federal government hollowed out by Trump sabotage and corruption, a very poor private and public sector cybersecurity posture, a horrific gun violence epidemic, a reckoning over systemic racism and police brutality, and a global climate crisis that is harming everyone, but especially Black, Indigenous, and Brown communities.
Despite not having had the benefit of the outgoing regime’s cooperation for his presidential transition, and despite having only bare Democratic majorities in Congress to work with, Biden has already gotten a lot done in conjunction with Harris and the rest of his team. That includes hundreds of millions of vaccine doses administered and passage of the American Rescue Plan.
Washingtonians can be pretty critical when judging their elected officials’ job performance, so it is to Biden’s credit that he gets favorable marks from a majority of voters in our state after four months in office.
Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump notably never once received a favorable approval rating from Evergreen State residents while in office.
Let’s look at Biden’s job performance by region.
First, here are the statewide numbers again:
QUESTION: Do you approve or disapprove of President Joe Biden’s job performance?
ANSWERS:
- Approve: 54%
- Disapprove: 41%
- Not sure: 5%
Now, here are the numbers by region:
QUESTION: Do you approve or disapprove of President Joe Biden’s job performance?
ANSWERS:
- King County
- Approve: 70%
- Disapprove: 23%
- Not sure: 7%
- North Puget Sound
- Approve: 54%
- Disapprove: 42%
- Not sure: 4%
- South Sound
- Approve: 40%
- Disapprove: 55%
- Not sure: 5%
- Olympic Peninsula and Southwest Washington
- Approve: 55%
- Disapprove: 40%
- Not sure: 5%
- Eastern and Central Washington
- Approve: 41%
- Disapprove: 57%
- Not sure: 3%
Biden’s best region is King County, which is not surprising, and his worst region is Eastern and Central Washington… also not surprising.
The more interesting numbers are from the other three regions.
Let’s start with the good news for Biden: his job performance is viewed favorably by voters in the Southwest Washington and the Olympic Peninsula region.
Biden did win the northern Peninsula (Clallam and Jefferson counties) last year. However, Biden lost the southern Peninsula (Pacific, Mason, Grays Harbor, Wahkiakum, Lewis, Cowlitz counties) to Donald Trump.
Democrats also got swept legislatively in that region as the 19th Legislative District flipped completely red for the first time in its current incarnation. It’s a really encouraging sign for Democrats that voters in this region think Biden is doing a good job overall as President.
The flip side of the ledger is the South Sound.
55% of voters there disapprove of Biden’s job performance, while only 40% approve. As we can see, the numbers in the South Sound — a region Biden won in 2020 — are the exact opposite of the North Sound, the other major suburban dominated region in our geographic breakdown. Biden’s approval number in the South Sound is even a tick lower than it is Eastern and Central Washington.
If the South Sound numbers mirrored the North Sound numbers, Biden’s statewide job performance approval would be closer to sixty percent and match the percentage of the vote he received in last year’s presidential election.
Our survey of 992 likely 2022 Washington State voters was in the field from Tuesday, May 25th through Wednesday, May 26th, 2021.
It utilizes a blended methodology, with automated phone calls to landlines (50%) and text message answers from cell phone only respondents (50%).
The poll was conducted by Public Policy Polling for the Northwest Progressive Institute, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1% at the 95% confidence interval.
Nationwide polls show that most Americans approve of Joe Biden’s job performance, just as most Washingtonians do. The FiveThirtyEight and RCP trackers have Biden at 54.2% nationally — the same as in our state-level poll.
- Civiqs: Biden job performance
- FiveThirtyEight: Biden job performance
- RealClearPolitics: Biden job performance
Tomorrow, May 28th, we’ll share our findings on Washington’s 2022 United States Senate race. Join us here on the Cascadia Advocate for an early look at the marquee statewide race in next year’s midterm elections.
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