Americans divided on whom they trust to do better job as president: Poll

Americans are split in a near-even divide between President Biden, former President Trump and neither on whom they trust to do better as president, according to a new poll.

Neither Biden nor Trump has the upper hand, with the ABC News/Ipsos poll finding that 36 percent of respondents trust Trump to do a better job leading the country, 33 percent trust Biden to do a better job, and 30 percent say neither.

Despite 29 percent of respondents saying Biden performed better than expected in his State of the Union address Thursday, the president’s approval ratings across surveyed issues appear largely unchanged, according to the poll.

About two-thirds of Americans continue to disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, inflation and the war between Israel and Hamas.

Out of the seven issues surveyed among respondents, Biden’s approval rating has changed on only two topics — abortion, which has improved but shows a near-even split in his rating, and the war between Israel and Hamas, in which his approval rating has worsened.

Meanwhile, Trump’s approval ratings during his time as president are higher than Biden’s on four of the seven issues surveyed, which include the economy, inflation, immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and crime. But his performance rating overall still hangs close to Biden’s.

When examining the approval ratings among their respective bases, the two presidential candidates diverge. Trump’s approval rating among Republicans ranges from the mid-70s to 90 percent mark on many issues, according to the poll, while Biden’s approval rating on the same issues lies between 59 percent and the mid-70s among Democrats.

This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted March 8 to 9, and is based on a sample of 536 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.