US President Joe Biden's approval rating is almost as low as that of his predecessor Donald Trump at the same stage in his presidency, a new poll shows.
The Democratic president’s approval rating is now 44.4 percent, and has dropped 4.8 percentage points over the past month, according to the Investors Business Daily (IBD)/TIPP poll.
Democrats are facing crucial midterm elections in November with Republicans being hopeful to regain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Biden's 44.4 percent approval rating does not include respondents who were not sure or refused to state an opinion about their approval of the president’s performance.
According to the findings of the poll, Biden's approval is now only slightly ahead of where Republican Trump's approval stood at the beginning of November 2018.
In the November 2018 IBD/TIPP poll, Trump's approval was 42.6 percent.
Meanwhile, analysis from poll tracker FiveThirtyEight may also be cause for concern for Biden and the Democrats.
The analysis showed Biden had an approval rating of 41.2 percent as of February 7, 2022, while his disapproval stood at 52.8 percent.
On February 7, 2018, Trump’s approval rating stood at 40.7 percent and had a disapproval rating of 53.8 percent.
FiveThirtyEight monitors the president's approval rating based on a wide variety of polls and its own system of pollster ratings.
Biden has not had a good approval rating since the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan on August 30 and there is little to indicate it will improve in the near future.
This has got Democrats worried as they fear it might affect the party’s performance in Nov. 8 elections. If Republicans manage to gain control of the House of Representatives or the Senate, Biden's legislative agenda would be seriously imperiled.
In a news conference last month, Biden acknowledged frustration of Americans at the end of his first year in office, but vowed to make progress in the fight against pandemic and soaring inflation.
He defended his course of action, saying no other president “has done as much” as he did in one year.
“I don't think there's been much on any incoming president's plate that's been a bigger menu than the plate I had given to me," he said. "The fact of the matter is, we got a lot done."
“I didn’t overpromise,” he said, blaming Republicans in Congress for their refusal to work with him. “I’m going to stay on this track.”