Poll: Majority hold negative view of Biden administration ethics
- Fifty-five percent in U.S. say ethical standards are not good or poor
- Biden joins Trump as only leaders with more negative than positive reviews
- The president is under scrutiny over alleged ties to son's business deals
maylen
(NewsNation) — A majority of Americans believe top officials in the Biden administration have subpar ethics, according to a new Gallup poll.
Just over four in 10 say these officials’ ethical standards are excellent (8%) or good (34%), whereas the majority, 55%, see them as “not good” (18%) or poor (37%), Gallup said in a news release.
It’s the first time Gallup has surveyed the public on the question since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021.
The 42% ethics score is slightly higher than that of the Trump administration’s 37% and 38% figures recorded during his tenure, but it’s lower than the scores of all other administrations since Ronald Reagan.
George W. Bush’s 74% score in 2002 is the highest.
Gallup notes the question has been asked infrequently, therefore not capturing all aspects of a president’s tenure. For instance, the only ratings during Reagan’s presidency predated the Iran-Contra affair.
“With that caveat, it’s notable that Biden and Trump are the only presidents whose administrations’ ethics have received more negative than positive reviews,” Gallup said in a news release. “Before now, the worst result was a tie, seen for Barack Obama’s administration in 2013 and George W. Bush’s in late 2005.”
Biden’s ethics rating closely matches his job approval rating of 40%, a consistency that has spanned the last three administrations.
“Before that, Americans typically made more of a distinction between these dimensions of presidential performance, with administration ethics ratings usually exceeding presidential job approval by at least five percentage points,” Gallup noted.
The president has come under scrutiny from congressional Republicans over alleged ties to his son’s foreign business dealings. No evidence has thus been shown to prove Biden was directly involved in his son’s affairs.
On Thursday, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee released the transcript of a closed-door hearing with Devon Archer, a business associate of Hunter Biden. Archer said he had no knowledge or evidence of the elder Biden’s direct involvement with any business dealings.
