By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden's approval rating stayed close to the lowest level of his presidency this week, a dark sign for his Democratic Party's prospects in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday found.
The two-day national poll found that 40% of Americans approve of Biden's job performance, unchanged from a week earlier.
The president's sagging popularity, which drifted as low as 36% in May and June, has weighed on his party's chances in November. Republicans are favored to win the House of Representatives, though experts say Democrats have a better chance of keeping the Senate.
Taking office in January 2021 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden's term has been marked by the economic scars of the global health crisis, including soaring inflation.
This week's poll showed about a third of Americans - including one in five Democrats and two in five Republicans - saw the economy as the most important problem facing the country.
Much smaller shares of respondents pointed to other issues as more pressing, with one in 10 Democrats saying the country's biggest problem was the end of national abortion rights, while the same share of Republicans pointed to crime.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted online in English throughout the United States, gathered responses from 1,004 adults, including 495 Democrats and 321 Republicans. It has a credibility interval - a measure of precision - of four percentage points.