President Biden has reportedly told friends and aides that he believes he would have won a second term if he’d stayed in the race and run on what he believes is a record of success at home and abroad. This comes as he is preparing to leave office as the least popular Democratic president in more than 40 years, according to recent polls, after voters dealt the Democrats a general electoral wipeout up and down the ballot last month.

Mr. Biden, who perceives himself as the man who restored America’s soul with his 2020 victory, is reportedly stewing during his final days on the world stage, according to a new report in the Washington Post. Despite his historically poor approval rating — which currently sits at just 37 percent, with 56 percent disapproving — the president believes his legislative successes would have been enough to carry him to victory in November. 

Speaking to members of the Democratic National Committee at their annual Christmas party on December 15, Mr. Biden said that he was leaving the country better than he had found it. 

“The one thing I’ve always believed about public service, and especially about the presidency, is the importance of asking yourself: Have we left the country in better shape than we found it?” the president said. “Today, I can say … with every fiber of my being, of all my heart, the answer to that question is a resounding yes.”

Voters may disagree. According to one NBC News exit poll of 2024 voters, just one-in-four Americans say their financial situation is better today than it was on election day 2020, compared to 76 percent who said they were worse off or about the same. 

At that holiday address, Mr. Biden touted his infrastructure law, his pandemic stimulus package, the largest “climate investments” in history, and creating “the strongest economy in the world.”

“I fully believe that America is better positioned, because of all of you, to lead the world today than any point in the last 50 years of my career,” the president claimed. 

Leading Democrats, however, say Mr. Biden was polling poorly well before his disastrous debate performance against President Trump in late June. One of the hosts of the influential liberal podcast Pod Save America, the former Obama aide Jon Favreau, said in an episode after the November election that he had seen internal Biden campaign poll data that showed the president losing at least 400 Electoral College votes to Trump, which would have been the worst defeat for a sitting president since President Carter in 1980. 

According to polling from a Democratic firm that was first obtained by Puck, Mr. Biden was set to lose not only the pivotal swing states in the Blue Wall and the Sun Belt, but also blue states like Virginia, New Mexico, and New Hampshire, all of which Mr. Biden won by double digits in 2020. 

That seems likely, given how unpopular Mr. Biden was on election day this year, and how narrowly Vice President Harris — who had a higher approval rating than her boss — won those blue states. Ms. Harris’s net approval rating on election day was negative 5 percent, with 49 percent disapproving of her job performance and 44 percent approving. Mr. Biden, on the other hand, had a net negative approval rating of 18 points, with 38 percent approving and 56 percent disapproving.