Joe Biden’s popularity plummets in UK, especially among Labour voters

Broad shift among Britons in the timr he has been US president, poll shows

Joe Biden’s popularity in the UK has plummeted, with just a fifth of Britons holding a favourable opinion of the US president, according to polling by Ipsos.
Mr Biden’s low support spanned the political spectrum, with 41 per cent of people who voted Labour in 2019 saying they had a negative view of the president, and half of 2019 Conservative voters agreeing.
Overall, 43 per cent of Britons surveyed said they had an unfavourable opinion of Mr Biden and just 20 per cent said they had a favourable opinion. A further 37 per cent responded “neither” or “don’t know”.
The latest findings by Ipsos Political Pulse, shared with The Telegraph, suggest a steep decline in favourable views on the 81-year-old’s presidency among one of America’s closest allies.
By contrast, similar polling conducted by Ipsos in 2020 before the last presidential election, found that Britons had a net positive view of Mr Biden (20 per cent).
Some 35 per cent of Britons had a positive opinion of Mr Biden in August 2020 – just three months before his victory against Donald Trump. Only 15 per cent had a negative opinion of the Democrat.
In the 2020 poll, half of respondents said they had no opinion of Mr Biden.
While the two polls are not directly comparable, owing to differences in the form of surveying, they do reveal a broad shift among Britons in the more than three years Mr Biden has occupied the Oval Office.
It comes as Mr Biden has struggled to project American leadership on the global stage, with Republicans in Congress stalling the president’s efforts to arm Ukraine and his relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, increasingly strained.
The latest Ipsos figures chime with Mr Biden’s low domestic approval ratings, which have been underwater for much of his first term.
Mr Biden’s current job approval rating among the American public is 39 per cent, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight, which found Mr Trump had a 43 per cent rating at the same point in his first term.
As the US prepares for a likely rerun of 2020, the polling by Ipsos found Mr Trump’s long record of unpopularity in Britain persists, with 71 per cent saying they had an unfavourable opinion of the Republican frontrunner.
That figure included 83 per cent of people who voted Labour in the last election, and 67 per cent who voted for the Conservatives.
While the respondents had much more unfavourable views of Mr Trump than Mr Biden, the figures suggest the Republican’s ratings have marginally improved.
Polling by Ipsos in 2020 found Mr Trump had a 76 per cent unfavourable rating, and an 84 per cent unfavourable rating in 2016.
The latest polling was conducted online between Jan 12-14 and covered a representative sample of 1,087 adults over the age of 18.