President Joe Biden’s approval rating has seen a slight increase that coincides with the stimulus check money deposit, according to a recent survey.
A central Reuters / Ipsos weekly political poll conducted March 17-18, put Biden’s approval rating at 59 percent.
This represents an increase of five percentage points from 54% in a similar survey conducted from March 10 to 11.
This was driven by an impulse among independent voters, whose rating went from 48 to 56 percent. Republicans’ approval went from 20 to 23 percent, while Democrats went from 91 to 92 percent.
This happened after Biden signed the American Rescue Plan last week. In signing this legislation, he said: “This historic legislation is about rebuilding the backbone of this country and giving the people of this nation – workers and the middle class, the people who built the country – a chance to fight. That is the essence of this . “
The package included another round of $ 1,400 stimulus checks, with payments starting to arrive for those eligible.
According to the IRS, 90 million Economic Impact Payments were sent by Wednesday.
This financial boost for the recipients comes with the research highlighting the economy, unemployment and jobs being one of the main priorities for the interviewees.
Almost a fifth, 18 percent, said that this is the most important problem the United States faces today. Second place was public health, diseases and illnesses with 16%.
On what Biden’s priorities should be, coronavirus / COVID-19 came in first when respondents were asked to select the two main problems from a list of key points.
It was selected by 41% of respondents. The economy came in second, with 34%.
On these issues, Biden received approval from the majority to address them. For COVID-19, 65 percent gave it majority approval. For jobs and jobs, then the US economy, their approval was 52 percent for each.
As with its general approval, there was a party split on these issues.
For the economy, 85 percent of Democrats approved of how Biden is handling it, compared with 23 percent of Republicans. For jobs and jobs, that was 83% to 23%. For the coronavirus, it was 93% to 39%.
The survey was conducted among 1,005 American adults from March 17 to 18. The sample included 456 Democrats, 374 Republicans and 113 independents. The margin of error for the entire sample is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. For Democrats, it is more or less 5.2 percentage points, Republicans more or less 5.8 percentage points and independents more or less 10.5 percentage points.
Biden’s approval ratings showed a party split and divisions among several other groups surveyed.
He called for unity, although his effort to do so is an uphill battle, according to the survey results.
Newsweek contacted the White House for comment.
Drew Angerer / Getty Images
03/19/21 11:20 AM EDT: The title of this piece has been updated.