Opinion polls are lagging indicators, often significantly so. In this respect, they’re obsolete even before they’re published. And yet.

In addition, some pollsters — like those at CBS News and The New York Times — are hopelessly biased in the way they sample their groups and phrase their questions to shape outcomes favorable to Democrats. We call this Pollaganda, and it’s a subtle but powerful tool with which the mainstream press can guide a herd of dull and incurious voters, lemming-like, to the leftist candidate or policy of their choice.

Still other pollsters, though — like those of ABC News and The Washington Post — are filthy, lying, cheating, rotten, and repugnant, and empirically so. How else to explain their infamous poll from just two weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election — a poll that showed Donald Trump trailing Joe Biden by a ridiculous 17 points in Wisconsin, a state Trump ultimately lost by a relative handful of votes in corrupt Milwaukee?

All this aside, however, recent polls seem to be calling out for attention, because they indicate a significant shift rather than a subtle one — a shift away from the incompetent boob living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Take the weekly Reuters/Ipsos poll: “President Joe Biden’s approval rating dropped by 7 percentage points and hit its lowest level so far,” Reuters reports, “as the U.S.-backed Afghan government collapsed over the weekend in an upheaval that sent thousands of civilians and Afghan military allies fleeing for their safety.”

According to Reuters/Ipsos, just 46% of Americans now approve of the job Biden is doing, down from last week’s 53%.

We’re not sure whether to take solace in that sharp drop, or lament the fact that more than half of those surveyed just last week thought this guy — this architect of ruin, this global embarrassment — was doing a decent job. Which just goes to show: No one ever went broke betting on the gullibility of the American electorate.

Want more proof? About 44% of respondents said they thought Biden has done a “good job” in Afghanistan.

Reuters blames that unfolding disaster for the precipitous decline. “Biden’s popularity dropped as the Taliban entered the capital, Kabul,” it writes, “wiping away two decades of U.S. military presence that cost nearly 1 trillion taxpayer dollars and thousands of American lives.”

Maybe, but maybe not. As we said, polls are lagging indicators, and these respondents were interviewed Monday. Had Biden’s foreign policy ineptitude fully settled in by then? Desperate Afghans hadn’t begun dropping from American C-17s yet, nor had the Taliban started shooting uncovered women in the streets. And with as many as 15,000 Americans still in Afghanistan, and the Taliban controlling the avenues to the airports, and the Biden administration having no plan for getting them out, the worst may well be yet to come.

On the other hand, a trove of other Biden-caused disasters had already begun to settle in by the time Ipsos began asking its questions: the border crisis, the unchecked inflation, and the spending calamity among them.

Finally, a more reliable poll, one taken daily, shows a similar trend in Biden’s flagging support. The Rasmussen Reports Daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 46% of likely voters approve of Biden’s job performance, while 54% disapprove. More ominous numbers are the 26% who strongly approve of Biden’s performance against 45% who strongly disapprove. That’s a deficit of 19. And it’s those folks — the ones who feel strongly about their position — who tend to show up for midterm elections.

On the “bright” side, we’re already seven full months into this failed presidency. Only 41 more to endure.

UPDATE: Biden’s popularity continues to slide, and his RealClearPolitics polling average now has him underwater, with 46.6 approving and 48.9 disapproving. And he’s well under water in a more recent poll from USA Today and Suffolk University, with 41% favorable and 55% unfavorable.