The Washington Post and ABC News have just released the results of a June 27-30 poll of 907 adults. It contains more bad numbers on the Biden administration’s performance at the border.
First, the poll shows that the public’s approval of the job that Biden is doing overall is slipping. A similar poll from April showed the president with 52 percent net approval, with 34 percent of respondents “strongly” approving of the way that the president was handling the job.
Biden’s approval slipped to 50 percent in the most recent poll, with just 30 percent approving strongly. By contrast, Biden’s overall disapproval numbers look sticky: In both the April and the June polling, disapproval stood at 42 percent, 35 percent “strongly” and seven percent “somewhat” in each poll.
This decline is occurring despite the fact the president still has strong support for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. On that issue, Biden can boast a 62 percent approval rating, versus 31 percent disapproval.
These results, however, actually represent a two percentage-point drop from April, when 64 percent of respondents approved of Biden’s handling of the pandemic. In each poll, 31 percent disapproved.
The linked issues of crime and the immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border are plainly weighing on Biden’s approval ratings, because he gets really bad grades on both.
Just 38 percent of those polled approved of Biden’s handling of crime in the United States, while 48 percent disapprove.
That is bad for the president, because 59 percent of respondents deem crime in this nation to be a serious problem – 28 percent extremely serious and 31 percent very serious, although I am not sure how one would distinguish between the two.
Biden’s numbers on his handling of the immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border are even worse than for his crime efforts: Some 51 percent disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration at the border, while just 33 percent approve.
Interestingly, both his approval and his disapproval numbers in handling the border were higher in April. Then, Biden had 37 percent approval, and 53 percent disapproval. The difference appears to be an increase in those who had no opinion: 11 percent in April, versus 16 percent in June.
Keep in mind that this happened at the same time that the Biden administration has gone on an offensive to argue that the president is doing a good job at the Southwest border.
For example, at a May 4 briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki asserted: “After coming into office, our administration immediately jumped into action to address the influx of migrants at the border — something that began during and was exacerbated by the Trump administration.”
Psaki never explained how, exactly, the Trump administration “exacerbated” the situation at the border, but in any event, the press secretary trumpeted the fact that the number of children in Border Patrol stations had fallen from 5,000 to 600 since March, and that the amount of time children spent in CBP facilities had dropped 75 percent during the same period (from 131 hours to fewer than 30).
When the best news that you can offer is that you are not doing as lousy a job as you had been, you are having a bad day. Remarkably, however, Psaki made these points at the beginning of her briefing.
That said, I have heard any number of congressional Democrats who are claiming that the situation at the border is improving. It actually is, but marginally so among certain demographics, as I explained in a June 10 post, while border apprehensions are still running at a 21-year high.
The really bad news there – as my colleague Todd Bensman explained on June 29 and in subsequent posts – is that illegal migration, which was traditionally a phenomenon involving Mexican nationals and then nationals of the “Northern Triangle” countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, has gone “intercontinental”.
More than 42 percent of all migrants encountered by CBP in family units (adult migrants and children) in May came from somewhere other than Mexico and the Northern Triangle, as did more than 22.5 percent of all aliens encountered by CBP at the Southwest border that month.
Sending “border czar” and Vice President Kamala Harris to the Northern Triangle and Mexico isn’t going to stop the migrants from “Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Russia, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, and dozens of other countries” who Bensman reports are on the way.
Many in the press are (objectively) pro-Biden, and so consequently most of these facts have not made it into the vast majority of papers and websites.
The results of the Washington Post/ABC News poll, therefore, suggest one of two things. Either the American people know how bad the border is, even if most of the media is concealing it. Or, they think that what they are hearing is bad, and if they knew how bad things really are, they would be furious.
My bet is on the latter.
The pro-Biden media will not be able to keep wraps on tens of thousands of aliens entering the United States illegally from Europe, Africa, and Asia forever. When that news does leak out, the Biden administration may view June 2021 as the “good old days”.
That said, the president could always change course on his disastrous border policies. Such a course correction does not seem likely anytime soon, but if the border crisis drags the president’s popularity down further, congressional Democrats up for reelection in tight midterm elections may demand a change.
By then, however, it may be too late – both for the incumbents and for their constituents.