[ad_1]
WASHINGTON (AP) – Americans broadly support President Joe Biden’s early handling of the coronavirus pandemic, new poll finds approval for his management of the economy increased after bill passed sprawling $ 1.9 trillion relief effort.
But Americans are more critical of Biden’s early approach to some of the burning issues that are coming to the fore, including guns and immigration, according to the Associated Press investigation. NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The president set goals to tackle both of these issues, but made it clear that these were not his immediate legislative priorities.
“I’m going to face all of these problems. The question is what are the priorities as they come and land on my plate, ”Biden said at a press conference last week.
Biden’s first weeks in office made it clear that his top priority was to reduce the pandemic: urging Americans to take precautionary measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, prioritizing the deployment of vaccines and pushing through the relief bill in Congress in a party line vote. Vaccine distribution has skyrocketed since Biden took office, with more than 96 million Americans having received at least one dose.
Americans have responded favorably to the president’s approach, with 73% approving of his handling of the pandemic. That includes about half of Republicans, a rarity given the division of Americans along party lines on many key issues in recent years.
Gwen Medley, a nurse from Galveston, Texas, who has administered vaccines in her state, is one of them. The 66-year-old Republican criticizes Biden on a range of other issues, including immigration, but said the president was doing a “very good job” on the pandemic so far – in part, she said, in because of the vaccination efforts he inherited from the Trump administration.
“Trump got the ball rolling, and Biden keeps pushing that ball,” Medley said.
Notably, Biden’s approval rating for the economy has risen slightly since the passage of the relief bill, which included direct payments to millions of Americans and aid to schools and state and local governments. . Sixty percent of Americans now say they approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, up from 55% a month ago.
Overall, approval for Biden’s job stands at 61% as he enters his third month in office, according to the AP-NORC survey. That’s well above the approval ratings of his predecessor, Donald Trump, at this very point in his presidency. Trump’s overall approval rating never exceeded 50% in an AP-NORC survey.
Biden and his advisers say that despite the litany of issues facing the country, he will be judged first and foremost on his handling of the pandemic, now in his second year. The virus has killed more than 550,000 people in the United States, and even with more accessible vaccines, some states are seeing an increase in the number of cases as new variants take hold.
“Our job is far from over,” Biden said this week as he urged states to keep mask warrants and other restrictions in place. “The war against COVID-19 is far from won. It is extremely serious. “
Much of Biden’s efforts have been in stark contrast to Trump, who stressed the need to keep businesses open and the American economy booming, even if it meant flouting public health guidelines to control the pandemic. Biden reversed that approach, but also tried to supplement the economy through legislation he enacted in early March.
No Republican in Congress voted for the measure, with some saying it unnecessarily added to the federal budget deficit at a time when the economy was already moving in a more positive direction.
Americans are divided over Biden’s deficit management, with 48% saying they approve and 50% disapproving. The majority of Democrats – 77% – approve, while the majority of Republicans – 83% – disapprove.
Biden faces a similar partisan divide over gun policy and immigration, two issues that quickly disrupted Biden’s carefully crafted plans for his first months in office.
When it comes to gun policy, 45% say they support Biden’s approach, while 52% disapprove of it. The investigation was conducted after a pair of fatal mass shootings, one in Atlanta that killed eight people, including six Asian Americans, and another in a Colorado grocery store that left 10 people dead. Biden said he is considering executive actions to tighten gun restrictions, but also said he believes “rational” legislation could be passed by the tightly divided Senate.
He called on the Senate, in particular, to pass measures already approved by the House that would expand background checks, although he first puts his own political muscle in a $ 2 trillion infrastructure package that the White House unveiled this week.
Biden also faces growing concerns along the US-Mexico border, where the number of immigrant families and children arriving is increasing. Republicans have blamed the increases on Biden’s early reversion of some of Trump’s most aggressive immigration deterrence policies, the measures the White House has warned should not be seen as an open invitation to cross the border.
The White House, in turn, blamed the border situation largely on conditions inherited from the Trump administration. In addition to his executive actions, Biden unveiled a legislative proposal that would offer an eight-year path to citizenship for millions of people currently in the United States illegally.
So far, only 42% say they approve of the way Biden handles immigration, and a similar share, 44%, say they approve of the way he handles border security.
While Biden initially focused primarily on domestic issues, foreign policy concerns loom as well. The president has a 55% approval rating on foreign policy, which puts this issue slightly below his overall performance at work. The poll also finds that Americans cite the threat to the United States from the spread of infectious diseases and the threat of extremist militant groups among their top concerns, as well as China’s influence in the world.
Democrats and Republicans have different concerns about the biggest threats the United States faces. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to cite the spread of infectious diseases (69% to 47%), militant extremist groups (67% to 51%) and climate change (76% to 22%) as threats to them. United States. more concerned about Russia’s global influence (50% to 42%).
Republicans are more likely than Democrats to be very concerned about the threat posed by illegal immigration (72% to 22%), China’s influence in the world (68% to 44%), the nuclear program Iran (58% vs. 39%), and the North Korean nuclear program (51% to 41%).
___
The AP-NORC survey of 1,166 adults was conducted March 26-29 using a sample drawn from NORC’s AmeriSpeak probability panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
[ad_2]
Source link