President Joe Biden leads former President Donald Trump 50-48 in a new Fox News national survey of registered voters — the first time Biden has led in that poll since October 2023. Trump led Biden 50-45 in Fox’s March poll, and 49-48 in May. “The key is that Independents favor Biden by 9 points, a shift from May when they preferred Trump by 2 points,” Fox’s Dana Blanton writes.

The latest result is within the margin of error, but the survey also offered some other reasons for optimism for Biden’s team. It found, for example, that voters have increasingly positive views of the economy, with 32% saying it is in good (24%) or excellent (8%) shape — a dismally low total that is nonetheless the highest of Biden’s presidency. The previous high under Biden was 30%, reached last month. The poll also found that 41% say they approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, the highest since January 2022, and 37% say they approve of how he’s handling inflation, higher than any point since early 2022.

Overall, Biden has a 45% approval rating, the same as Fox’s pollsters found last month and the president’s best result since January 2023. More than a third of voters, 34%, say they are satisfied with the way things are going in the country, the highest percentage to say that since December 2021. Forty-four percent of voters say they are optimistic about the U.S. economy, up nine points from a year ago, and 59% say they are getting ahead or holding steady financially, up 5 percentage points since June 2023 — though a majority of voters still say they trust Trump to do a better job on the economy, by a 51-46 margin.

Trump blasted the poll in a social media post, dismissing it as “TRASH!”

The poll of 1,095 registered voters was conducted from June 14 to 17 and the results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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