U.S. voters are split on whether President Donald Trump is handling his job better than former President Joe Biden, according to a new poll.
The latest Harvard CAPS / Harris poll, released on Monday, showed that 51% of U.S. voters said Trump is doing a worse job as president than his predecessor. Forty-nine percent said Trump was doing a better job than Biden, which is down from the 53% who said the same in December.
The results were largely split along partisan lines, with 87% of Republicans and 15% of Democrats saying Trump was doing a better job than Biden. Eighty-five percent of Democrats and 15% of Republicans said Trump was doing a worse job than Biden. Fifty-six percent of independents said Trump was doing a worse job than Biden, and 44% said he was doing a better job.
Overall, 46% of voters said Trump was doing a worse job than they expected. Just 28% said he was doing better than expected and 26% said he was performing as expected.
The poll also showed Trump’s approval rating in January slipped to 45%. This is a slight dip from the 47% approval rating he had in December, according to the poll.
The poll also asked respondents about whether Trump was doing a better job on handling the economy than Biden. Trump was largely elected to address affordability, jobs and inflation, but has had low approval ratings on those issues for months.
Voters viewed the Trump administration as more responsible for the current state of the economy than the Biden administration, according to the poll. Sixty-three percent said the economy was mostly due to the Trump administration, while 37% said the same of the Biden administration.
Fifty-three percent said the economy is worse under Trump’s administration than Biden’s administration. Forty-seven percent said the economy is better under Trump, which is down from the 50% who said the same in December’s poll.
The poll was conducted Jan. 28-29 among 2,000 registered voters. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.99 percent points on the 95% confidence interval.
