President Joe Biden's approval ratings now as bad as Trump's: poll

US President Joe Biden's public approval rating fell to 36% this week to tie the lowest rating of his 19 months in the White House as inflation takes its toll on American life, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday.

The two-day national poll found that 59% of Americans disapprove of Biden's job performance.

This comes after the president's tour of the Middle East - which he began on 13 July - in which he visited Israel, the Palestinian territories and Saudi Arabia.

His trip did not appear to be popular among US legislators, as Democratic lawmakers avoided commenting on the trip, and those who did comment tried to frame it in terms of realpolitik. 

Biden's approval rating has been below 50% since August 2021 and has hovered around its record-low since first hitting it in May, raising alarms his Democratic Party is on track to lose control of at least one chamber of Congress in the Nov. 8 midterm election. Biden's rating fell three percentage points from 39% a week earlier.

Biden's popularity has suffered from a surge in inflation, which rose to a 40-year high in June at 9.1%.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine helped drive fuel prices higher. The Covid-19 pandemic has hindered global supply chains.

Biden's approval rating within his own party fell to 69% this week from 74% a week earlier. Only 11% of Republicans approve of his performance in office.

Biden's lowest ratings have rivalled the lows of his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose popularity bottomed out at 33% in December 2017.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll is conducted online in English throughout the United States. The latest poll gathered responses from a total of 1,003 adults, including 437 Democrats and 377 Republicans. It has a credibility interval - a measure of precision - of four percentage points.

(Reuters)