Coal in his Christmas stocking.

The week before Christmas it appears that his oft-stated opposition to the substance notwithstanding, Santa is putting coal in the stocking of President Joe Biden. Those lumps of coal take the form of devastatingly bad polls.

Two polls released this week cast a long shadow over the president's reelection prospects. The first is from Monmouth University. FOX New's Jessica Rosenthal reports.

The latest Monmouth poll says President Biden has a 34% approval rating. It's down for all groups, and among Democrats, it's down from 88% in July to 74% now. Independent voters are now at just 24% approval. There are five critical areas. 69% disapprove of the president's handling of immigration. Nearly the same do not approve of his handling of inflation. The other areas with majority disapproval are climate change, jobs and transportation, energy infrastructure. 44% say they are struggling financially, with only 12% reporting an improving financial situation In the three years before the pandemic, between 20 and 25% of us reported improving financials.”

FOX News itself released a poll on the same day. Correspondent Brooke Singman filed this report.

If the election were held today, President Biden would lose if he faced off against former President Donald Trump or former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Now, the former president is four points ahead of Biden in this hypothetical matchup, and Haley is projected to beat Biden by six points if she were to go head-to-head against him next year. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ties Biden with 47% of the vote in that poll. Biden might claim the polls are wrong, but former President Barack Obama is reportedly worried about his former vice president's chances for reelection in 2024.”

The last sitting president to seek reelection with approval numbers languishing in the 30s was Jimmy Carter. But when Carter announced on December 4, 1979 that he would seek election to a second term, his public approval was still fairly solid, standing at 54 percent. That number didn't begin to tank until four months later in March 1980, as the Iranian hostage crisis, which began on November 14, 1979, started to take its toll. By the time of the Democratic National Convention in August 1980, Carter's public approval rating stood at a dismal 32 percent. Despite that weak number, Carter fought off a strong challenge by Sen. Ted Kennedy and won the Democratic Party's nomination. But he lost the 1980 election in a 44-state Electoral College landslide to Ronald Reagan.

The only little glimmer of polling sunshine for President Biden comes from 538.com. According to numbers released yesterday, Donald Trump, who has what appears to be an insurmountable lead in the race for the Republican nominatn, stands with a public approval rating of just 42.1 percent favorable, against a 52.7 percent unfavorable rating – a negative gap of nearly eleven percentage points.

Republicans will need to be mindful of the fact that Joe Biden appears to be losing more than Donald Trump appears to be winning.