President Joe Biden’s approval rating is taking a hit as a majority of Americans disapprove of his handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
According to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll released on Tuesday, 41% of respondents say they approve of Biden’s job performance, while 55% say they do not. As the publication puts it, that is “a big drop.”
USA Today said the poll “was taken Thursday through Monday, when the nation’s headlines were dominated by scenes of desperate families trying to evacuate the Kabul airport and a surge of COVID-19 cases across the United States.”
The poll also found that just 26% of respondents say they approve of his handling of the withdrawal.
David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center, attributed the drop in Biden’s approval rating to the withdrawal, “Today, President Biden’s overall approval has taken a turn for the worse due to his awful job performance rating on Afghanistan.”
“His approval on immigration and the economy are also upside down. The only issue keeping him remotely in the game is his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, where he is barely at 50%,” he added.
The poll found that 53% of respondents approved of the decision to leave Afghanistan, but 62% disapproved of his administration’s execution of the withdrawal.
For the majority of Biden’s time in office, his approval rating has been above 50%, according to FiveThirtyEight’s approval rating tracker.
The tracker shows that as the Afghan government collapsed and images surfaced of chaotic scenes at the Hamid Karzai International Airport, the president’s approval rating dipped below 50%.
Biden has defended the withdrawal as he argued, “There’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing.”
He also said that “there is no good time to leave Afghanistan.”
“No one can name for me a time when this would end. And what constitutes defeat of the Taliban? What constitutes defeat? Would we have left then? Let’s say they surrender like before. OK. Do we leave then? Do you think anybody… the same people who think we should stay would’ve said, ‘No, good time to go’? We spent over $1 trillion, George, 20 years. There was no good time to leave,” the president explained.
