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President Joe Biden is riding high on a public job approval rating his predecessor could only dream of as Americans are giving the 46th Commander-in-Chief high marks based clearly on his handling of the COVID-19 crisis. In new polling from Ipsos, Biden enjoys a 58 percent approval rating among registered voters, including 56 percent of independents — a critical voting bloc that helped deliver him the presidency. At the highest point in his tenure, former President Donald Trump had just a 49 percent approval rating — back in January 2020, on the heels of his first impeachment acquittal in the senate.

Last month, Trump’s former chief pollster Tony Fabrizio released a 27-page, post-mortem campaign report that laid most of the blame for the incumbent president’s loss on his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. From Politico’s coverage of the report, “The autopsy says that coronavirus registered as the top issue among voters, and that Biden won those voters by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. A majority registered disapproval of Trump’s handling of the virus.”

There is no question that the 2020 election outcome was based predominately on the COVID-19 crisis and then-candidate Biden’s assurances that he would defeat the virus early in his administration. In his Inaugural Address, the president spoke of the coronavirus crisis through the lens of unity and shared sacrifice: “My fellow Americans, in the work ahead of us, we will need each other. We will need all our strength to persevere through this dark winter. We are entering what may well be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus. We must set aside the politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation.”

Just over 50 days have passed since the president spoke of that “dark winter,” yet there has been a marked improvement in Americans’ views on the COVID-19 crisis. New polling from Morning Consult track a clear jump in public sentiment around the vaccine: “Two and a half months into the country’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout, the public’s opinion of the effort has improved markedly — though they still want it to go faster… 57 percent of adults said they think the vaccine rollout has been effective, up from 39 percent in early January.”