‘No Matter How You Look At It’: CNBC Host Says Polls Spell Bad News For Biden On All Fronts

CNBC’s Steve Liesman said Tuesday that poll numbers are bad for President Joe Biden “no matter how you look at it.”

Liesman jumped right into Biden’s approval rating, noting that despite economic data that shows inflation is rising but at a slower rate, Americans are still souring on the administration.

“Americans giving President Biden terrible approval numbers no matter how you look at it. First, let’s look overall, 35% overall approval versus 59%, a record high for the CNBC All-America Survey during the president’s tenure, 33-62 on the economy, he’s — he’s as almost as much underwater as he’s ever been,” Liesman said.

“And then, now on foreign policy 29-63, that’s a record high 34 points under water. Let’s look at where it’s falling from 41% if we go and look at the trajectory on this, up five points on disapproval, down six points on approval. This is not the most wonderful way for a president to be headed in into a reelection year. And one really interesting group that we’ve been looking at now is the Latino vote and Latino preference here. You can see that it was sort of even in the second quarter and now a big gap. It was 61 percent disapproval of President Biden and just 28 percent approval.”

Liesman then explained how the poll found that former President Donald Trump leads Biden and the current president is losing support among key demographics that helped him win in 2020

“Latino voters, we saw, actually flipping from plus 7 for Biden, to plus 5 for President Trump (sic). On the one hand Biden hasn’t actually started campaigning yet. It’s unclear if groups that not supporting him now would actually pull the lever for Donald Trump,” Liesman said, adding that Democrats give Biden a 70% approval rating on the economy whereas under Trump, Republicans gave the Republican a 90% approval rating.

Inflation has ticked down from its high of more than nine percent in 2022 and remains higher than Fed’s target rate of two percent. Prices for rent, groceries and transportation remain high and total prices are up 17.2 percent since Biden took office in Jan. 2021, data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows.

Biden is struggling to gain approval over his handling of the border crisis, with a Marquette University Law School poll showing that a majority of voters, including Latinos, want tighter border security. Trump, as of December, has the edge up on Biden over the issue among key demographics.