President Biden, who campaigned to do a better job managing the pandemic than former president Donald Trump, has lost support among independents, women, and fellow Democrats for his handling of the coronavirus, according to a U.S. study by the Covid States Project, a collaborative effort by researchers from Northeastern, Harvard, Northwestern, and Rutgers found.
Biden’s pandemic approval rating, which had been as high as 59 percent in April, fell 10 points to 49 percent in September. While higher than Trump’s 34 percent approval one year ago, Biden’s current pandemic rating is not that far off from his overall approval figure of 45 percent, also a decline, according to the study released Friday. “People may be disappointed in how things have gone in the second half of the summer and early fall,” says David Lazer, university distinguished professor of political science and computer sciences at Northeastern, and one of the researchers who conducted the study.