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Tag: biden poll
President Biden speaking at his first Congressional address in front of Vice President Harris, left, and House Speaker Pelosi.

Poll: Voters Strongly Support Biden’s Families Plan

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

President Joe Biden has barely begun to roll out his American Families Plan, and it's already proving to be pretty popular, according to fresh polling from Politico/Morning Consult.

At base level, 58 percent say they either strongly or somewhat support the $1.8 trillion investment to improve the nation's child care, education, and paid leave programs. That support includes 86 percent of Democrats, 54 percent of independents, and 25 percent of Republicans.

But some of the individual components of the plan are more popular than the proposal as a whole.

  • Ensuring low- to middle-income families pay no more than seven percent of income on child care: 64 percent support, 22 percent oppose
  • Free preschool for all 3 to 4 year olds: 63 percent support, 26 percent oppose
  • Two free years of community college: 59 percent support, 31 percent oppose
  • $15/hour minimum wage for child care workers: 59 percent support, 31 percent oppose
  • Extending expanded child care tax credit: 57 percent support, 26 percent oppose
  • Two years of subsidized tuition at HBCUs: 56 percent support, 31 percent oppose

At least 10-18 percent of respondents were undecided on every one of those initiatives, so there's presumably room to grow support for them as the White House puts more time and energy into selling the package.

The two most popular items—a seven percent of income cap on child care expenses and universal preschool—also garnered solid GOP support, with 45 percent of Republicans backing the income cap and 42 percent supporting universal preschool. The popularity of individual initiatives may prove important if Democrats decide to fold certain pieces of Biden's jobs and families proposals into one package.

That's a solid start on an initiative that President Biden has only begun to explain to the public. It's also generally in keeping with the popularity of Biden's other trillion-dollar initiatives addressing the pandemic and jobs/infrastructure, though Biden's $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package typically polled in the 40s/50s with Republican voters.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, left.

Poll: Voters Favor Biden’s Border Strategy — Including Republicans

A new poll has found that a majority of Republican voters support the Biden administration's approach of addressing the root causes of immigration to the United States even as GOP lawmakers have repeatedly attacked the president for it.

A Civiqs/Immigration Hub poll, which surveyed just over 3,000 voters from April 15-20, revealed that 85% of Americans believe the U.S. government should work more closely with other countries to reduce immigration before it starts.

Among Republicans, that number was even higher, at 87%.

Among Democrats, 86% said the United States needed to work with foreign nations to address the root causes of immigration; 81% of independents said the same.

"After four years of harsh, inhumane immigration tactics aimed at deterring people from coming to America, we now see a public and a president intent on taking a new approach," Immigration Hub executive director Sergio Gonzales said in a statement on Thursday. "In particular, as Vice President Harris continues to roll out new initiatives and achievements in addressing the root causes of migration with our neighbors to the south, voters strongly support the need for this type of regional leadership. They understand that migration at our border is driven by desperate circumstances such as extreme hunger and violence."

In March, President Joe Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris to look into the primary reasons that prompt immigrants to flee their home counties, in particular the Northern Triangle countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador in Central America, where gang violence and poverty are rampant.

On April 27, the vice president held a virtual roundtable with Guatemalan community-based organizations to help her identify the communities that need support the most.

"I know that there are acute factors," she said. "The acute factors that I think of are the catastrophes that are causing people to leave right now: the hurricanes, the pandemic, the drought, extreme food insecurity. And then I believe there are the longstanding issues, what we call the 'root causes': corruption, violence, and poverty, and, of course, the lack of economic opportunity and the lack of not only climate mitigation, but climate adaptation and the lack of good governance."

Harris noted that she would visit Guatemala in June.

On April 26, the vice president hosted Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei for a virtual bilateral meeting to discuss ways the two nations could cooperate on issues surrounding immigration.

"They agreed on the importance of prosperity, good governance, and anti-corruption measures to protect all members of society and to build a foundation of hope for a better future," Harris' spokeswoman Symone Sanders said in a statement. "In light of the dire situation and acute suffering faced by millions of people in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, Vice President Harris announced an additional $310 million in U.S. government support for humanitarian relief and to address food insecurity."

Harris also spoke over the phone on April 7 with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador about collaborating on similar issues. She is scheduledto speak with him again on May 7 about his tree-planting immigration proposal in Central America.

Despite those efforts, Republicans have blamed Biden for stoking a so-called "crisis" at the southern border, suggesting he himself is the "root cause" of immigration from Central America due to his various policies on the matter.

"I'm getting sick & tired of hearing this 'root causes' gibberish coming from the White House. If they traveled to the border they'd know before even landing that the root cause is THEM," Rep. Byron Donalds tweeted on Thursday.

Moreover, GOP lawmakers have refused to accept that Harris is not directly in charge of issues at the border itself, repeatedly attacking her even though the Biden administration has clarified her actual role numerous times.

"Why hasn't our 'Border Czar' Kamala Harris visited the border? Why won't Biden mention that? We need to keep our country safe and secure. This administration is NOT up to the task," Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, the former Trump administration White House physician accused of misconduct, tweetedon Thursday.

As White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted in a March 29 briefing, "The Vice-President of the United States will be helping lead that effort [to address] the root causes, not the border. There's some confusion over that."

"The Northern Triangle, which I'm sure you're aware of, is not the same as the border," she reiterated later, in an April press briefing.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

President Joe Biden

CNN Poll: GOP Efforts To Discredit Biden Are Failing

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Republicans have been adamant that President Joe Biden's popularity will fall as they vilify his policy proposals, including the coronavirus relief package Congress passed in March and the infrastructure bill congressional Democrats are currently trying to pass.

Yet a new CNN poll released Wednesday found that their strategy has not worked, as Biden — and his policies — remain popular nearly 100 days into his tenure, despite the GOP's best efforts.

According to the CNN poll, 53 percent of Americans approve of the job Biden has done in his first 100 days in office. That approval rating tracks with Biden's approval rating average from FiveThirtyEight, which has hovered around 53 percent since he was sworn in on January 20 — a level he has maintained despite GOP criticism.

Other polls show that despite Republicans' attacks on his policies, both the coronavirus relief package and the infrastructure bill are even more popular than Biden is.

A CBS News/YouGov poll taken between April 21 to April 24 found 58 percent of adults in the United States approve of Biden's infrastructure plan, even though Republicans have been attacking it by saying it is not about infrastructure.

And that same poll found that 66 percent of adults believe the coronavirus relief package — which extended unemployment payments, authorized another round of direct checks, and made a child tax credit more generous to help alleviate childhood poverty — has been "helpful to the economy."

In all, that's a bad sign for Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who toldPolitico that Biden's "policies are going to be our road to comeback."

Polls show the GOP's strategy of attacking Biden's infrastructure plan because it includes things they argue aren't infrastructure while simultaneously attempting to vilify it because it raises taxes on corporations and the rich is also rife with peril.

A Morning Consult poll from April found that voters believe things like care for the elderly, internet access, and water pipes are infrastructure, despite GOP claims that they aren't.

And voters support raising taxes on those groups. A Monmouth University pollfrom Monday found that 64 percent of Americans support raising taxes on corporations, while 65 percent support raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 annually.

The fact that Republicans can't seem to make a dent in Biden's popularity appears to be pushing them toward a strategy of running against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the 2022 midterms.

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee that seeks to elect Republicans to the House, released a memo this week saying Pelosi is unpopular and that tying her to Democratic candidates could help in the quest to win back the House.

But it's unclear that will be the political winner that Republicans think it is.

Stu Rothenberg, a nonpartisan political handicapper, told the American Independent Foundation that, at this stage, he doubts running against Pelosi would be what changed GOP fortunes in the midterms.

"They've got Nancy Pelosi on the brain here, but the reality is that 2022 midterms is likely to be about Joe Biden," Rothenberg said, referring to Republicans. "And, I'd have to see some numbers that would really blow my mind to think that running against Nancy Pelosi would be more effective than running against Joe Biden."

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

President Joe Biden

GOP Furious Over Biden’s Strong Polling Numbers

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Polling released over the past two days shows both of President Joe Biden's major pieces of legislation — the American Rescue Plan coronavirus relief package and the American Jobs Plan infrastructure bill — are overwhelmingly popular with the American public.

The legislation remains popular even after continued GOP criticism that the plans are "radical" and "socialist" and will increase the national debt.

Now Politico is reporting that moderate Republicans are "seething" over their failure to move Biden's policies to the right. One aide to a GOP lawmaker said, "Everything they support is defined as either Covid relief or infrastructure, and everything they oppose is like … Jim Crow voter suppression and evil. And you constantly just feel like you're in this gaslighting chamber of insanity. But it's working."

A look at the polling shows just how badly the GOP's attempts to make Biden's policies unpopular have gone.

A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday found 63 percent of Americans support the coronavirus relief package Biden signed into law, which authorized a round of $1,400 relief checks, extended more generous federal unemployment benefits, and expanded the child tax credit in a manner that some analysts said would help drastically cut child poverty rates.

Monmouth said the rate of support for the relief package is actually now higher than the 62 percent it saw in March, when the bill first passed without a single Republican vote.

The recent polling finds that GOP attacks on Biden's $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan infrastructure package are also falling flat.

Republicans have slammed the legislation, saying that only a small fraction goes towards infrastructure, and that the mechanism to pay for it — increased taxes on the rich and corporations — is going to hurt the economy.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) complained that the plan contained billions in spending for elder care, which she said is not infrastructure.

However, a Politico/Morning Consult poll released on Wednesday found 54 percent of voters believe that caregiving should be considered infrastructure. That poll also found a majority of voters consider funding for child care, public schools, water pipes, internet access, and housing to be infrastructure as well.

The poll found that 57 percent of voters support the American Jobs Plan.

Other recent polls also show that a majority of the public supports the plan, including a New York Times/SurveyMonkey poll released Thursday that found 64 percent of Americans support it.

This is despite Republicans' ongoing attempts to scare the public away.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said that increased taxes on corporations and on wealthy Americans — such as himself, with an estimated net worth of $39.2 million as of 2018 — would damage the economy.

"Increasing the corporate tax rate won't pull us out of the COVID recession or set up long-term economic prosperity, but keeping the American corporate tax rate competitive will help businesses recover," Johnson tweeted on April 6.

But a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday found the plan actually got more popular among Americans when they learned it would be funded by taxes on corporations.

RealClearPolitics reported that the House Republican Study Committee, the largest GOP conference in the chamber, had former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in to give its members a pep talk on Wednesday on how to successfully vilify Biden's agenda, telling them to call Biden a liar and saying, "When your opponent is in the midst of committing suicide, there is no reason to commit murder. The result is the same."

"We didn't lose the White House because the American people disagree with our ideas and support what [Democrats] are trying to do right now," Christie claimed.

Current polling is pointing in a different direction.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.