Three-quarters of Americans approve Biden’s vaccine rollout but most disapprove on handling of border crisis

Latest poll shows that a strong partisan divide remains except on vaccine distribution

Some 75 per cent of Americans approve of Joe Biden’s response to the pandemic and rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, according to the latest polling.

The president has already met his promise to deliver 100 million vaccine doses in his administration’s first 100 days and has upped that goal to 200m doses.

However the polling, from ABC News/Ipsos, also shows that almost 60 per cent disapprove of how the Biden administration is handling the situation with migrants and unaccompanied children at the southern border with Mexico.

There is a deep partisan split on how Mr Biden is handling all of the issues surveyed. There is a forty-point approval gap at least between Democrats and Republicans on each topic.

Furthermore, Americans are equally split on whether the president is making the country more united or more divided, though a plurality of 40 per cent say that he is doing neither.

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Overall Mr Biden is lauded for his handling of the pandemic and economic recovery but most people disapprove of his performance relating to gun violence and the border crisis.

He gets his highest grades for the distribution of Covid vaccines (75 per cent) and the response to the virus itself (72 per cent). Some 60 per cent approve of how Mr Biden is handling the country’s economic recovery.

On both gun violence and the border, 57 per cent disapprove of how he is approaching those issues.

The majority of Americans — 54 per cent — view the situation with migrants and unaccompanied children at the US-Mexico border as a crisis.

A further 42 percent characterise the situation as a serious problem, but not a crisis, while 4 per cent say it’s not a serious problem.

Mr Biden earns bipartisan support on only one issue: the distribution of coronavirus vaccines, with 92 per cent of Democrats in approval, along with 77 per cent of Independents and 53 per cent of Republicans.

While Democrats give him very high marks on the pandemic response and economic recovery (96 per cent and 89 per cent, respectively), they have less admiration when it comes to gun violence and the border with approval ratings in the low sixties.

Following a series of mass shootings in the past few weeks, a solid two-thirds majority say curtailing gun violence should be a higher priority than protecting the right to own guns.

The polling reveals widespread agreement on the issue among Americans of all ages, education levels, racial or ethnic background, and from all regions of the country.

However only about one in three Republicans (36 per cent) see enacting new laws as a priority, with 64 per cent saying that protecting the right to own a wide variety of guns is more important.