If you’re a Democrat, there is almost no good news in the latest Morning Consult governor and senator Approval Rankings. They can take comfort that it looks like they’ll be taking back the governor’s office in Illinois and that Scott Walker looks like he’s in real trouble in Wisconsin. And it’s always nice to have it confirmed that Mitch McConnell is still the least popular senator in the country. Overall, however, the numbers are somewhere between disappointing to catastrophic.
I’ll provide you with the best and worst because that’s always interesting, but we will need to dig deeper than that.
Top 5 Senators
| Approval | Disapproval | |
| Bernie Sanders | 72% | 23% |
| Patrick Leahy | 65% | 23% |
| John Thune | 62% | 26% |
| Amy Klobuchar | 60% | 25% |
| Michael Enzi | 59% | 25% |
Bottom 5 Senators
| Approval | Disapproval | |
| Mitch McConnell | 34% | 52% |
| Jeff Flake | 32% | 50% |
| John McCain | 41% | 48% |
| Claire McCaskill | 39% | 44% |
| Joe Manchin | 43% | 44% |
Top 5 Governors
| Approval | Disapproval | |
| Charlie Baker | 71% | 16% |
| Larry Hogan | 68% | 17% |
| Kay Ivey | 67% | 15% |
| Phil Scott | 65% | 21% |
| Chris Sununu | 63% | 21% |
Bottom 5 Governors
| Approval | Disapproval | |
| Dan Malloy | 21% | 72% |
| Mary Fallin | 25% | 63% |
| Bruce Rauner | 26% | 60% |
| Susana Martinez | 37% | 53% |
| Paul LePage | 41% | 53% |
I’ll begin by looking at the Senate. The two Republican senators from Arizona are among the least popular senators, but neither of them are running for reelection and both of them earned their poor numbers by being outspoken critics of President Trump. The Democrats will look at those numbers and think that they have a good chance to pick up both of those seats in the near future, but they’ll need to beat different candidates to accomplish that. The greater lesson, which will be noticed by all the Republican senators is that there is a heavy price for getting on the wrong side of President Trump.
You’ll also notice that the Democrats’ three most vulnerable senators are in bad shape and moving in the wrong direction. Joe Manchin and Claire McCaskill are both ranked in the bottom five for approval. Manchin’s net approval dropped a whopping seventeen points since the fourth quarter of last year, while Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota approval dropped nine points and McCaskill’s dropped five. Bill Nelson of Florida and Joe Donnelly of Indiana are still popular, but since the last survey, Nelson has lost eight points and Donnelly has lost four. The only good news is that Sen. Robert Menendez’s approval bounced back strongly after he won a mistrial in his corruption case and Jon Tester of Montana saw an astounding sixteen point bump.
Needless to say, the Democrats cannot afford to lose any Senate seats if they want to take control of the chamber, but Manchin and McCaskill are looking very weak and Heitkamp is headed in the wrong direction. There’s nothing in the numbers to incentivize the Republicans in the Senate to break with Trump.
The situation with governors is far more alarming but the overall lesson seems to be at odds with the results from the Senate surveys. The most popular governors in America are Republicans, and most of those Republicans are serving in Deep Blue states with Democratic legislatures. Ground zero is New England, which should be the Democrats’ strongest area of strength. Three of the top five governors are Republicans from the region, while the two Democrats from New England are getting horrible numbers. Dan Malloy of Connecticut, who is thankfully not running for reelection, is the least popular governor in America. Gina Raimando of Rhode Island, who is running for reelection, is down eleven points since December and nows stands at 39 percent approval to 50% disapproval. By comparison, embattled and indicted Republican Eric Greitens of Missouri has a 40 percent to 39 percent approval rating. Democrat-friendly independent Governor Bill Walker of Alaska is limping along with a 29 percent to 52 percent approval rating.
When you consider that Democrat John Bel Edwards of Louisiana has a healthy 50-31 rating, you begin to see a pattern. Americans in a lot of the country seem to like governors who have to serve with hostile legislatures, probably because it forces them to compromise. This isn’t a magic formula, as Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner can confirm, but it seems to the promising environment in which to govern if you want to be popular.
What should concern Democrats is that Trump’s toxicity is not rubbing off on Republican governors from Blue States and that almost all the Republican governors up for reelection next year have somewhere between solid and astronomical approval numbers.
As for Republicans, they’re getting mixed messages. On the one hand, the Senate numbers indicate that independence from Trump’s brand of politics is a losing proposition. But the governor numbers indicate that compromise governing is the surest way to gain popularity.
As we saw with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s decision to retire yesterday, the national GOP is in crisis mode. But, looking at these numbers, the Democrats should be in crisis mode, too. They need to figure out why they’re doing so well in House elections but they’re still looking at a real prospect of losing seats in the Senate and failing to translate an historically bad year for the Republicans into significant gains in the gubernatorial elections. Something is broken, and they need to figure out what it is.
“…Something is broken, and they need to figure out what it is.”
I will tell you what it is. They normalized Reagan. That is it and that is all.
There is no way for them to regain any of the standing and credibility that they lost on the night of 4-5 November 1980, when they failed to call a spade a fccking shovel and declare total war on the Republican Party. Every word out of every Democrat’s mouth, ever since, should have been the utter illegitimacy of the Republican Party, its men, its measures, and its methods. Nothing else: just this. It is no good debating whether the timbers of the barn, which has finally collapsed, ought to be cleared away, when the horse went galloping down the road with the barn door superglued to its back 39 years ago.
Just look at Pelosi and Schumer’s press releases re: Paul Ryan quitting. They were blowing smoke up his ass. Ugh!!!
Something is always broken in Democratic politics and never is in Republican politics. Hmm. I see the Governor elections as being very different from your take. I think it has much less to do with balancing right vs. left and much more to do with the individual candidate and their personality and campaign (and legacy for incumbents). Especially, in blue states and purple states.
For example, I think the governor of RI is likely to win and the Governor of MO likely to lose both for personal reasons (theirs not mine). You need to also account for overall political mobilization and new likely voters in your model.
This is what happened with Baker and Hogan, who benefitted from poor Democratic campaigns and a tolerance for moderate GOP governors. However, the south and red mountain west are more likely to continue red governance (as always).
I also think McCaskill has a far better chance than Heidi as a veteran incumbent in a mixed state. Ditto Connally. Senate could actually end up 50:50, which would be unhelpful (Pence) but could effectively stall judicial appointments.
As always, it’s all about turnout and Russian sabotage.
You’re missing another thing. The Democrats in Massachusetts can override any Baker veto they want. I’ll let you guess how many times they have. I have a longer comment about all this.
The “Red Mountain West” governors manage racially homogenous states with small populations and comparatively simple economies of resource extraction and spending Federal tax dollars.
Many (Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Idaho) are defacto colonies of California or Texas (New Mexico) and suffer accordingly anytime the world’s 6th and 10th largest economies slow.
As such, if you look at their records, these popular Republican governors govern like a progressive conservatives/moderate Democrats ca. 1976. The electorate simple doesn’t demand the same level of white resentment legislative vengeance that we see in red states to the east and southeast.
Isn’t this just a bunch of people pissed at the state of politics in America? Republicans hate Democrats for being Democrats and Democrats hate Democrats for not magically ending our time in Trumpistan?
It reminds me a little of how ACA polled poorly until people had to choose between ACA and no-ACA.
“It reminds me a little of how ACA polled poorly until people had to choose between ACA and no-ACA.”
See also: “I really like the ACA, but that Obamacare is going to destroy the country!”
The individual numbers seem like a lot of noise to me. The jumps are just too big to be real (-17 for Manchin but +16 for Tester). And there are a lot of undecideds (about 20%) for almost all of them, which can strongly affect the net approval. I don’t see sample sizes, but I’m guessing they were small.
More meaningful would be to average across, say, the top 10 competitive races, to see the direction. I do think you would see some movement away from Ds, which would be consistent with the fact that the generic house ballot has tightened a bit since December. But not as dramatic as the individual approval numbers would suggest.
You write:
Of course. That is because almost all polls are run by people with an agenda. Now…the agenda may be driven by what we laughingly call “policy matters”…essentially, which side of the UniParty they support…or it may be simple play-for-pay, but most often it’s a combination of those two factors plus sheer, bureaucratic-style, academic-driven incompetence.
How anyone can “believe” a poll after the total disaster of the 2016 presidential polls throughout Trump’s entire run from the primaries right on up to the White House is totally beyond me. It must be some kind of media-caused trance state.
Business as usual in the United State of Omertica, though.
Bet on it.
AG
. . . post with “Cue ag to blather stupidly AND ignorantly (not the same thing!) about how useless all polls are.”
And look, here you are doing exactly that, right on cue!
OTOH, there are the facts that comprise Reality:
I’m sorry you’re so profoundly (and determinedly) ignorant about how scientific polling works and how results can validly be interpreted. Your insistence on repeatedly shouting your ignorance here for all to see is simply pathetic and pitiful, though.
What should concern Democrats is that Trump’s toxicity is not rubbing off on Republican governors from Blue States and that almost all the Republican governors up for reelection next year have somewhere between solid and astronomical approval numbers.
Ask any Democratic activist in Massachusetts about this. The media goes easy on Baker as does the Democratic super-majority in the legislature. The legislative leaders love Baker because they it means they don’t have to pass legislation those DFH’s want. Just like Cuomo with the IDC. It might be the same in Maryland though i don’t know if the Democrats have a super majority there or just a big majority.
This is complete bullshit.
How so?
It’s just a complete lie. The legislature has had a field day overriding literally hundreds of Baker’s vetoes. They do exactly what they choose to do.
source source source (navigate to the 190th legislature vote list, the vast majority of which are, in fact, veto overrides)
Now, Cuomo and the IDC, that’s another story. It’s pretty clear Cuomo is using the IDC to block a democratic majority and ensure that only votes he wants to support get put on his desk. OTO, he has managed to pass several progressive priorities so his approach does have its defenders.
Everybody know Massachusetts is such a right-wing hellhole because of those perfidious quisling Democrats who refuse to…
wait, I’ll come in again.
(I don’t know if this is correct or not — that’s what makes it a hypothesis!)
He’s the most popular governator in the nation because Dem legislative supermajorities force him to govern indistinguishably from . . . wait for it . . . a Democrat! (That list of overrides you linked really was quite impressive.)
Whaddayathink (you, too, janicket; aren’t you from there)? Does it fly?
Partly that; partly he came into the office with a popular persona, as a person and for competence in running one of the state’s major health insurance providers (Harvard Pilgrim); he hasn’t had any big blowups or scandals in his administration; he’s sincerely socially liberal; he’s easy in front of the camera and accessible to the media; in sum, he’s the beau ideal of a Republican governor of a solidly Democratic state, in a state with a long history of such divided governance, which can work extremely well with a Baker type, not so well if you got a LePage — except you probably wouldn’t. The most LePage-like governor we’ve had in my 69-year lifetime, in fact, was Ed King — a Democrat.
Phil doesn’t know bupkis about Massachusetts politics; he tries to fit what little he thinks he knows into a narrowly prescribed narrative.
It’s not bullshit. But you can believe the Democrats never do anything wrong. You know what else all that junk you posted said? Funding levels for a lot of things are way off from early last decade. Austerity, baby!! But don’t talk to any Massachusetts activists. Keep your head in the sand and hope the Democrats don’t get their asses handed to them in 2022. Ask any Boston area resident about the MBTA.
Well, what you said was actually bullshit. That’s why I linked to all that stuff.
You’ll never find me making that argument.
I don’t believe that you talk to actual Massachusetts activists. I believe you talk to one specific dumbass that lies to you.
Do you intend to vote democrat in 2022?
They’ll tell you the T is a vital part of the city and metro area.
At this point, if Phil said Massachusetts had the Atlantic Ocean on its eastern side, I’d run down to the shoreline to make sure it was still there.
SATSQ: They’ve failed to embrace my preferred solutions to all policy issues.
This isn’t hard, people.
Comment got lost.
I am not surprised by these numbers. #1, Senators by and large are boring and colorless. So it’s no surprise House candidates are doing better.
But #2, I don’t think hatred for Republicans necessarily translates to passion for Democrats, especially among younger, newer, and millennial voters. No surprise that Bernie is the top favorite senator: heck, I see Sanders/Clinton relitigated EVERY DAMN DAY on my Twitter and FB.
I don’t think these voters are seeing Hope and Change in the options for 2018. I think they’re seeing old people with problematic voting records demonstrating that they don’t even grasp how Facebook works.
I’m old enough and cynical enough to not expect much from my US Senator. “Opposing the GOP” is pretty much enough for me But for the younger me, it’s wouldn’t be the kind of thing that inspired me to vote. And I can imagine a lot of younger voters are looking at Democrats, while hating the GOP, and muttering “I gotta vote for some living mummy that doesn’t know how to use Twitter?”
You write:
Yes indeed!!!
Add to that the massive potential minority vote.
UniParty feuds mean nothing to people who have been screwed by both parties.
AG
In Arizona only Jeff Flake is actually UP for re-election; McCain’s term officially ends in 2020. It’s not likely he’ll stay in that office, though.
The leading contenders for the GOP nod for Flake’s seat are Kelli “Chemtrails” Ward and Joe Arpaio. This is a seriously down cycle for the GOP so the survivors of their primaries are going to be the most bug-fuckingly crazy of them.
The likely Dem contender(and I believe the only declared one) for Flake’s seat is Rep. Kyrsten Sinema who may well have a shot in a blue wave year, especially against Arpaio.
Arizona is purpling.
Jeff Flake was elected in 2012 by a 49.2% to 46.2% margin. There has been some demographic and social change since then. I would say Sinema has a good shot against any likely opponent.
SATSQ: The Democrats are, and have been, doing everything right; the only thing broken is our society.
There is nothing the Dems need to do right now. the donald….the wheels are coming off. Cohen has just told Stormy’s atty that he will plead the 5th if her case goes to trial. Every day the GOP hangs in there with the donald makes the wave bigger.
Not surprising really.
At least as portrayed on cable and nightly news, the Senate has been the main impediment to President Stupid’s agenda. The Koch/Mercer/et al. funded propaganda machine is already running attack ads in places like West Virginia and Missouri. Holding the Senate is very important because if they lose the House, they can still pack the courts.
However, the undecided margins for most of those “popular” Senators is too large to think that particular person is a safe reelection bid. for example, if Trump Lovin’ Hatch had run that margin would have come out against him.
Governorships are, I think, very unique elected position. Voters view them in very localized terms and their fortunes are almost entirely independent from DC. Also, let’s be honest, most Republican governors have been hiding under their desks since January of 2017 and letting DC take all the heat.
The Democratic base, Democratic operatives, and Demcratic politicians just aren’t very good or smart about politics.
It’s just inescapable. Apparently, blue state voters like to give Republicans veto power over their lives.