Republicans see Biden as more harmful than Putin — Analysis

Americans of all political stripes largely agree that the world would be a better place without Vladimir Putin in office as Russia’s president, but Republicans are even more sour on the US leader.

Morning Consult’s Monday poll revealed that 83% Americans think the world would have a better future if Putin wasn’t in office. 84% said the same about President Joe Biden among GOP voters.

It’s not that Republicans are bigger fans of Putin than are Americans at large. According to the survey, 83% agreed with Putin that the world would be a better place without him running it. However, the majority of independents were less critical of Putin with 79% saying that it would be better if he was not in power.

Biden was the only area where poll results diverged. Only 17% of Democrats disagreed with Biden’s presence. Nearly 78% of Republicans view his existence in office as detrimental to the world. Perhaps most concerning for Democrats heading into this year’s midterm elections is that more than half of independents (51%) said they believe the world would be better off without Biden in the White House. Only 34% said that the world would be worse without Biden.

Putin was the leading villain in the US poll, exceeding Kim Jong-un’s ratio of 78% of respondents saying the world would be better without him. China’s Xi Jinping was next in line, at 59%, followed by Biden, at 51%. Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman came in at 39% and 37%, respectively. Only 12 percent of the respondents believed that the world would have a better future if Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zilensky was not in power.

Biden was the US’s most disappointed president for 75 years, after he took office on January 20, 2021. Gallup polls released in October revealed that Biden has suffered the largest decline in president approval ratings since Harry Truman in 1945, when he was trying to take over the role of Franklin Roosevelt. Biden’s approval ratings have continued to slide this year, dropping to 38% in a CNBC poll released last week. This compares to a December rating of 46%, which was just before the Ukraine crisis dominated US media coverage.