Is Joe Biden's Approval Rating Getting Even Worse? Here's What Polls Show

President Joe Biden's approval rating fell below 40 percent for the first time since August 2022 on July 1, according to data from elections analytics website FiveThirtyEight.

The site, founded by polling guru Nate Silver, found the president had the approval of 39.9 percent of American voters on Saturday, versus disapproval of 54.9 percent, giving a net approval rate of minus 15.

In April Biden announced he is seeking to run for a second term in 2024, with polling giving him a commanding lead over the other fringe Democrats who are seeking the party's presidential nomination. As Trump enjoys a strong lead over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, this could potentially set up a rematch of the 2020 presidential election.

Biden's approval rating on Saturday was the lowest FiveThirtyEight has recorded since August 9, 2022, when he was on just 39.6 points. This came shortly after Biden recorded the lowest approval rating of his presidency, of just 37.4, on July 18. However it has made a slight recovery since Saturday, with FiveThirtyEight recording the president's approval at 40.1 percent on Monday, versus a 54.5 percent disapproval.

To calculate its approval ratings FiveThirtyEight aggregates recent polls by what it deems reliable pollsters, then adjusts the figure to account "for each poll's recency, sample size, methodology and house effects."

Speaking to Newsweek about the process Mary Radcliffe, a senior research assistant at FiveThirtyEight, explained: "Polls within 30 days are considered, but the older the poll is, the less influence it will have on the average, and that decay is pretty significant, since both the modeling technique (local polynomial regression) and the averaging of different bandwidths serve to downweight older polls."

According to FiveThirtyEight data Biden hasn't recorded a positive net approval rating since August 23, 2021, with the slump in his popularity recorded that month coinciding with the chaotic fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.

Biden has a lower approval rating than Donald Trump did at the same point in his presidency, according to FiveThirtyEight, with Trump having the backing of 42.4 percent of Americans 895 days into his presidency, versus 40.1 for the Democratic incumbent after the same number of days.

Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush were all polling substantially ahead of Biden at this point in their presidency, according to the data.

Newsweek has contacted the White House press office for comment by email.

The Supreme Court ruled against Biden's student debt forgiveness scheme on Friday in a fresh blow for the embattled president.

Under the plan most graduates would had seen up to $10,000 wiped from their student debts with Pell Grant recipients, who come from poorer households, getting $20,000 removed from their debt. The scheme was challenged by a number of Republican-controlled states as a case of executive overreach, with conservatives also arguing it would be unfair for non-graduates to help pay off the student loans of graduates.