It’s largely a function of three things. The first is overwhelming support from Democrats, 60 percent of whom approve of him strongly and more than 9-in-10 who approve at least somewhat. The second is that a majority of independents at least somewhat approve of his performance. The third, and perhaps most unexpected, is that a fifth of Republicans say they at least somewhat approve — including 13 percent of those who also say they voted for former president Donald Trump last year.

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Those are striking results in the details. But if you are an avid consumer of Fox News’s programming and online content, you’d be forgiven for not having heard about them.

On Thursday morning, I noticed that the results, released Wednesday evening, didn’t appear on the Fox News homepage. Instead, there was a text link to a story about the poll generally, focused on a different question that dealt with the coronavirus pandemic. That story by Fox News’ Dana Blanton does include the Biden approval number — literally the last line in the story.

Of course, most Fox News fans get their information from the outlet’s television coverage more than its web content. And on that front, the odds that they heard about the Biden number at all are low.

Fox polling is often released in concert with Bret Baier’s evening news show, as was this week’s poll. Guest host Bill Hemmer walked through the numbers at the top of the show and then quickly transitioned to an interview with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) that centered on criticism of Biden’s approach to crime.

On Thursday afternoon, the approval number came up again — to point out that Biden’s approval on immigration was underwater (meaning that more disapprove than approve) by 13 points. This was centered on Vice President Harris’s visit to the border on Friday.

There was another pointed mention of the approval polling. On the popular morning program “Fox & Friends,” the hosts asked one of the network’s contributors about Biden’s apparent popularity.

“How do you explain his approval rating, according to Fox’s poll, is 54 percent?” co-host Brian Kilmeade asked, getting the number wrong.

“I mean, I truly don’t believe that,” she responded — referring, just to put a fine point on it, to Fox’s own poll. “I don’t think that is a legitimate number.” (Co-host Steve Doocy later added that “Fox News stands by the poll.”)

The contributor went on to argue that Biden is getting “coddled” by the media, arguing that “people who tune into those outlets are not getting the full picture on Joe Biden.”