US President Donald Trump's poll numbers continue to plunge while the popularity of both his predecessor Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden, are on the rise.

The website FiveThirtyEight put Mr Trump's approval rating at just 37.1 per cent over the Christmas holiday. Every other President has had a rating at least 10 per cent higher on the 337th day of their first terms, making Mr Trump the most unpopular leader in modern US history at this point of his time in office.

Mr Obama, on the other hand, has seen his approval rating increase by four points to 63 per cent since leaving office in January, according to a Gallup poll.

At 57 per cent in a CNN poll, Mr Biden's popularity is 20 points higher than that of the current President. The former Vice President's unfavourability rating is at just 27 per cent, nearly ten points lower than in the same CNN poll conducted while he was in office in 2015.

To add insult to injury, Mr Obama's favourability rating in the deeply conservative state of Alabama was at 52 per cent last month, just ahead of Mr Trump's 49 per cent.

That was at the time when the President came out in support of accused child sex abuser and Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, in the race he ultimately lost to Democrat Doug Jones. That particular poll was run by Mr Trump's preferred television viewing - Fox News.

Barack Obama says we must set example with social media use, in Prince Harry interview

The former leaders largely stayed out of Washington politics, at first.

Mr Biden devoted time to furthering cancer cure research and writing a book, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, about the death of his son Beau from a rare form of brain cancer.

Though he said last month in a speech in Chicago that Mr Trump was part of a history of "charlatans" but empathised with his voters. Mr Biden said the President's supporters in the working class “aren’t prejudiced, they’re realistic” about how their lives have become harder and more expensive.

He also said Mr Trump's "America First" foreign policy is "ideological incoherence, inconsistent and erratic decision-making".

Mr Biden, even at 75, is seen by many in Democratic circles as one of few legitimate challengers to Mr Trump's 2020 bid for a second term. The former Delaware senator has dodged the question of whether he will run, however.

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Mr Obama initially posted pictures of himself and former First Lady Michelle Obama on a fantastic beach vacation after eight gruelling years in the White House.

However, he has weighed in on particularly important pieces of legislation like Congress' effort to replace and repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

In June he issued a rare post-presidential statement in which said the senate bill in its form at the time "is not a health care bill. It’s a massive transfer of wealth from middle-class and poor families to the richest people in America."

"Simply put, if there’s a chance you might get sick, get old, or start a family—this bill will do you harm," Mr Obama said, adding that he would support any Republican bill that addressed the shortcomings of his namesake healthcare bill.

The former president also stumped on the campaign trail in November for Democrat Governor-Elect Ralph Northam in Virginia.