Gallup poll finds most Americans give Biden administration a negative ethics score

Americans rate the ethics of the Biden administration more negatively than positively, with only 42 percent of people giving it a positive rating, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.

The 42 percent ethics score given to the “top Biden administration officials,” in the poll’s language, is just above the 37- and 38-percent scores given to former President Trump’s top officials during his administration. The poll is the first ethics assessment from Gallup since President Biden took office.

The poll found that 34 percent of Americans find the Biden officials’ ethics standards good, and 37 percent find them poor. Among Democrats, 84 percent rated the Biden administrations’ ethics as excellent or good, while only 6 percent of Republicans gave them that rating.

Biden’s overall approval rating has held at a steady-but-low figure of around 40 percent, according to to recent polling.

The same Gallup polling gave former President George W. Bush’s administration an ethics rating above 70 percent and former President Obama’s administration an ethics rating of 50 percent while they were serving in office. Those ratings were also close to Bush’s and Obama’s approval ratings at the time.

The poll released Thursday was conducted from July 3-27 and included 1,015 American adults. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.