New polling finds that President Joe Biden’s approval rating has hit an all-time low amid a groundswell of support for Palestinian rights among young voters.
According to an NBC poll released on Sunday, a whopping 70 percent of voters aged 18 to 34 say that they disapprove of how Biden is handling Israel’s massacre and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. The findings come as Biden has been giving Israel military assistance and political support with no red lines, despite a deluge of historians, human rights organizations and advocates for Palestinian rights warning that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza and creating a humanitarian crisis of astronomical proportions.
Biden’s policies toward Israel have contributed to a huge downturn in his approval rating, the polling finds. His approval has fallen the most among Democrats, the majority of whom said that Israel’s military has “gone too far” in their current siege and that they disapprove of Biden’s handling of the massacre. According to the survey, Biden’s approval is at a mere 40 percent — the lowest level seen by NBC in his presidency so far.
There has also been a major collapse in Biden’s approval among young people. In September, 46 percent of voters between the ages of 18 and 34 said that they approve of Biden. Now, only 31 percent say the same — a decrease of 15 percent.
The conductors of the survey, Hart Research Associates Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt and Public Opinion Strategies Republican pollster Bill McInturff, said the results regarding Biden and his policy decisions on Gaza are stunning.
“Joe Biden is at a uniquely low point in his presidency, and a significant part of this, especially within the Biden coalition, is due to how Americans are viewing his foreign policy actions,” Horwitt told NBC.
“This poll is a stunner, and it’s stunning because of the impact the Israel-Hamas war is having on Biden,” said McInturff, who also said that he has never seen a foreign policy issue not directly involving U.S. troops impacting American domestic politics to this level.
Another indicator that Biden’s decisions on Israel are negatively impacting his approval rating is the poll’s finding that approval of his foreign policy is also at an all-time low. Only 33 percent of voters said that they approve of Biden’s handling of foreign issues, down from 41 percent in September.
Young voters are a crucial demographic for Biden. Exit polls from the 2020 election found that young voters overwhelmingly voted for Biden over Donald Trump, while Democrats traditionally garner more support among young voters than any other age group.
But Biden — whose administration has not just been publicly supporting Israel’s siege but also privately squashing dissent over the issue among staffers — is currently at dire risk of losing critical support from traditionally Democratic-leaning groups.
People across the country who voted for Biden or who would normally lean toward doing so are renouncing him, citing their frustration over his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. A poll conducted late last month by the Arab American Institute found that support for Biden in the upcoming election dropped from 59 percent in 2020 to a mere 17 percent following Israel’s current siege of Gaza.
Other polling and recent reporting have shown that the opposition to a ceasefire from Biden and many other Democrats in Congress is starkly opposed to public opinion. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released last week found that 68 percent of Americans, including 75 percent of Democrats, support the idea of a ceasefire in Gaza, while support for Israel has fallen by nearly double digits since the beginning of the siege.
Meanwhile, staffers for members of Congress are saying that they have never seen such a mismatch between what they are hearing in calls and emails from constituents versus what their elected representatives are saying.
“This building is not listening,” one Democratic aide told HuffPost. “I’ve never seen such a disconnect between where voters and constituents are and where Congress is, and that’s saying something because there’s always a disconnect.”
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