Biden Approval Gets Big Bump After SOTU, Russia Invasion

President Joe Biden’s approval rating received a significant bump after his State of the Union address and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist National poll released Friday.

The poll, conducted March 1-2, showed Biden’s approval rating increase to 47%, an eight point jump compared to the last poll released in February. The change is mostly due to gains among Democrats and independents, rising to 90% and 39% approval, respectively.

“This is an unusual bounce,” Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll, told NPR. “It gets him back to where he was pre-Afghanistan.”

State of the Union speeches typically don’t affect a president’s approval rating this much, with Gallup recording an average approval increase of 0.2% between 1978 and 2018. Approval of Biden’s handling of the Ukraine crisis has increased to 52%, compared to 34% in the last poll.

A substantial majority of 83% said they support the economic sanctions the U.S. and allies levied against Russia, including 8 in 10 Republicans. Over two-thirds of respondents said they would still support the sanctions if they resulted in higher energy prices, including 6 in 10 Republicans.

“There is a fine line,” Miringoff told NPR, “but the bottom line is Democrats came home and the nation — on the whole war in Ukraine — people are behind him.”

The Biden administration reported strong jobs numbers on Friday, adding 678,000 jobs to the economy in February, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS), beating economists’ expectations.

A majority of respondents, 53%, still disapprove of the president’s handling of the economy, while 51% think his foreign policy choices have weakened U.S. standing in the world.