President Joe Biden is visiting Arizona, where he's been deep underwater in polling

President Joe Biden is visiting Arizona this week, where polling indicates the president faces an uphill battle to carry the state as he did — narrowly — in 2020.

Nationwide, Biden is sitting at about a 41% approval rating with voters, according to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released in late July.

That poll from late June showed the president's approval was basically flat over the past 18 months. It included 1,220 adults and was conducted June 22-26, and designed to represent the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents was plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

“Inflation still is high in Arizona and gas prices are some of the highest in the nation. Illegal immigration is still a massive problem. Rightly or wrongly, Joe Biden gets a lot of that blame,” Republican consultant Barrett Marson said. “He is an unpopular president in Arizona.”

Not that former President Donald Trump is doing particularly well. The likely GOP nominee for 2024's presidential race also has seen his ratings among voters change much over the past year, and he sits at about 35%, according to Pew Research Center polling. Trump has lost a little ground among Republicans in the past year, with 63% of poll respondents having an unfavorable rating of him.

Drilling down into what polling data is available on Arizona, things seem even worse for Biden.

Biden is underwater by 17 percentage points here, according to polling earlier this year by Morning Consult. That means the number of poll respondents who rated the president unfavorably is 17 points higher than those who rated him favorably, according to the poll from January to March.

Arizona is particularly tough on Biden because of both its large number of independents and because he polls even worse with them.

In Arizona and Michigan, both battleground states, only 29% of independents give Biden positive marks. The number of independents giving him unfavorable marks was 36 points higher.

“The only thing that makes Arizona a competitive state in 2024 is that Donald Trump may be the nominee. That is the only way Joe Biden can repeat his 2020 victory in Arizona,” Marson said. “If Tim Scott or even Ron DeSantis are the nominees, then Joe Biden has a very tough time winning Arizona.”

Biden will visit the Grand Canyon, where he will announce a plan to protect the region from uranium mining.

In 2012, the Obama administration imposed a 20-year uranium-mining ban on more than 1 million acres of federal lands north and south of Grand Canyon National Park. Environmentalists and tribes in the region hope Biden will adopt a proposal to turn that land into a national monument.

“If you asked the general population, should we restrict mining in the Grand Canyon, that is probably a popular policy," Marson said. "I think he will earn some points among his Democratic base and among independents or moderates.”

Marson said Biden might score political points if he were to visit Arizona and talk about reproductive rights or inflation, issues that weigh heavier on voters.

“But you can’t come to Phoenix when it’s 100 and oh my god (degrees outside),” he said, adding that the president will likely get as many members of the media to travel to the Grand Canyon from metro Phoenix as he would at a media event in Phoenix.

Biden fares particularly poor in polling on the economy, which the National Republican Congressional Committee used to denounce his Arizona visit.

“Another Biden campaign stop does nothing for Arizonans struggling under the crushing weight of ‘Bidenomics.’ More than ever Arizona Republicans play a crucial role fighting to lower costs for everyday Arizonans and serving as a check on Biden’s failing tax-and-spend policies,” NRCC spokesperson Ben Petersen said in a written statement.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: President Biden visits Arizona where he's polling poorly