Poll: Majority of Likely Midterm Voters Say Biden Not in Charge of Agenda

The majority of likely voters in the 2022 midterm elections believe President Joe Biden is not directing his administration’s policy and that others are in charge of the agenda, according to a nationwide poll.

Fifty-seven percent of voters polled said Biden is not fully executing the duties of his office. Only 36 percent said he is fully in charge. About a third of Democrats and more than three quarters of Republicans said others are directing the president’s policy and agenda. The poll, conducted by the Convention of States Action and the Trafalgar Group, captured more than a thousand voters’ opinions during June primary elections.

Congressional Republicans have speculated that Biden chief of staff Ron Klain is responsible for much of the leftward shift in the president’s agenda. Some even took to calling the chief of staff “Prime Minister Klain” and “the guy behind the curtain” when COVID-19 relief legislation stalled in early March.

Biden’s apparent cognitive decline was the subject of much reporting during the 2020 election. At campaign events and in speeches, Biden frequently lost his train of thought, misspoke, lashed out suddenly at audience members, and uttered non sequiturs.

A stenographer who worked with Biden from 2011 to 2017 told the Washington Free Beacon in September that the former vice president is “not the same Joe Biden.”

“He’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the same mental acuity as he did four years ago,” Mike McCormick said. “He doesn’t have the energy, he doesn’t have the pace of his speaking. … He’s a different guy.”

The Trafalgar Group, an Atlanta-based polling company, is best known for accurately predicting the 2016 presidential election. The company inaccurately predicted the 2020 election in favor of then-president Donald Trump, however.

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