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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden's approval rating in Utah is a lot like the prices advertised in a grocery store commercial that comes on every night during the evening news: low, low, low.
Perhaps ironically, supermarket prices are among the reasons Utahns continue to give Biden poor marks nearly 18 months into his presidency, which has been marked by crisis after crisis from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to record-high inflation.
A new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll found 34% of residents approve of the job Biden is doing, while 61% disapprove. Another 6% don't know.
The president's current approval rating in Utah has stayed consistent since he plummeted to under 30% in February after a difficult first year in office. People are clearly frustrated with the president every time they watch the news, go to the grocery store or fill up their cars, though gas prices seem to have peaked.
Signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, Congress' most significant gun reform in nearly 30 years, didn't appear to bump his ratings in the state. Passed with support from Senate Republicans in the wake of several mass shootings, Biden said the law would save lives.
Women in Utah approve of Biden a little more than Utahns overall at 39% approval, but men fall the other way at 29% approval.
Biden's rating in the Beehive State is similar to national polls, which have political pundits asking how low can he sink.
Citing a Monmouth University poll showing Biden at 36% approval — the lowest of his presidency to date in that survey — CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza wrote, "How low can Biden go? Put another way, is there a built-in floor for Biden's approval rating? Or might he continue to trend lower and lower?"
As of Thursday, the president had a 38.6% approval rating and 56.3% disapproval nationally, according to FiveThirtyEight's polling average. Seven in 10 Americans say they do not want Biden to run for a second term, according to a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey shared with The Hill last week.
In Utah, nearly half those polled strongly disapprove of Biden's performance. That number ballooned to 65% among respondents who identified themselves as Republicans, with another 11% somewhat disapproving.
More than three-fourths of those who consider themselves conservative disapprove of the job he is doing, though, interestingly, 15% of "very conservative" Utahns strongly approve, which is higher than "somewhat conservative" and moderate voters who strongly approve.
Biden approval rating among moderates is 37%, the poll shows.
Among those in the survey who identified as Democrats, 73% approve of the president's performance, while 23% disapprove. But his numbers among "liberal" and "very liberal" respondents dropped to 64% and 57%, respectively.
Dan Jones & Associates conducted the poll of 808 Utah registered voters June 16-29. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.45 percentage points.
A recent poll by AP-NORC found Democrats nationally are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the direction of the country and the economy. Democrats had been positive about how things were going, but now 78% say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Utah Democratic Party Chairwoman Diane Lewis said last week that the disapproval has more to do with partisan gridlock rather than the Biden administration itself. Under Biden, she said, the country has seen significant action on issues that have been stalled for a long time, such as gun safety and infrastructure.
