US President Joe Biden’s popularity remains close to the lowest level of his tenure, just hours before his state of the nation address, according to an Ipsos poll commissioned by Reuters.

According to the poll, 41% of Americans approve of President Biden’s performance, up one point from the previous Reuters/Ipsos poll.

At the same time, however, 65% of respondents expressed the opinion that the country is moving in the wrong direction. Last year, that percentage was 58%.

Faced with the Covid-19 health crisis and skyrocketing inflation, President Biden entered 2023 on the back of positive (or not so negative) results from the Democratic midterms and signs of easing inflationary pressures. Conversely, he has come under fire for classified documents found in his home, after criticizing his predecessor Donald Trump for the same reason.

The low approval rating worries Joe Biden, who hovered around 40% for most of last year (and even dropped to 36% in May and June).

Republican Donald Trump spent most of his term in the White House (2017-2021) with popularity ratings similar to those of Democrat Biden. In fact, Trump’s popularity dropped to 33% in December 2017.

The 80-year-old Biden is expected to announce his candidacy in the 2024 presidential election in the coming weeks. Despite his low popularity rating, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that Americans prefer Democrats to Republicans on a number of issues, such as health care, women’s rights , gun control, crime control and the labor market. On foreign policy and economic issues, the percentage of Democrats and Republicans does not differ much.

The survey was conducted on a representative sample of 1029 adults, the error of statistical error is ±3%.

Source: APE-MPE, Reuters.