Only 23 Percent of Americans Say Country Is More United Under Biden: Poll
As President Joe Biden recently marked his first 100 days in office, a new poll released Sunday suggested that only 23 percent of Americans felt the country has become more united under his administration.
The study, conducted by ABC/Ipsos, said that of this particular group, 87 percent credited Biden, while 3 percent attributed it to Republican leaders in Congress, and 10 percent said it was due to both of them.
During an address in March, the president spoke of unity in order to overcome the coronavirus pandemic.
"And national unity isn't just how politics and politicians vote in Washington or what the loudest voices say on cable or online," he said at the time. "Unity is what we do together as fellow Americans."
The new poll comes on the heels of Biden's address to Congress on Wednesday in which he outlined his plans for infrastructure, immigration reform, taxes and racial justice reform. In an earlier ABC News/Washington Post poll, 52 percent of Americans approved the work Biden was doing in his first 100 days in office—the lowest for a president since 1945 with the exceptions of Gerald Ford in 1974 (48 percent) and Donald Trump in 2017 (42 percent).
Also in the new ABC/Ipsos poll, 28 percent of Americans said the U.S. is more divided. Of that group, 60 percent blamed Biden for the divisions, 6 percent faulted Republicans, and 34 percent said both were responsible.
About 48 percent of Americans felt neither more united nor more divided since Biden took office.
Views of national unity also fell along party lines. The poll found that 95 percent of Democrats say the country is more either united (45 percent) or about the same (50 percent), while 97 percent of Republicans said the country is more divided (65 percent) or the same (32 percent).
Overall, about 64 percent of Americans said they were optimistic about the direction of the U.S. following Biden's first 100 days, said the poll. The last time the country came close to that mark was in 2006, when 61 percent of Americans felt the same way about the country's direction, according to ABC News. It added that prior to Trump's 2016 win, 42 percent of Americans were optimistic while 52 percent felt the opposite.
The new poll also found that about half of Americans (51 percent) believed that the president is compromising with congressional GOP leaders at the right amount. In contrast, 40 percent felt Biden has done too little compromising, and 9 percent said he's done too much of it.
