Brewer approval down

Voters in Arizona are unhappy with how Jan Brewer has handled redistricting in the state, and perhaps as a result PPP finds her approval numbers at their worst since before she resuscitated her political career with Senate Bill 1070 last April.

Only 31% of voters support Brewer removing Colleen Mathis as chair of the Redistricting Commission, to 43% who oppose her move. Republican agree with what Brewer did by a 54/16 margin but Democrats are even more unified in their displeasure with her action, 13/72.  Independents think Brewer did the wrong thing by a 19/41 margin as well.

The unhappiness with Brewer's actions shouldn't be taken as an endorsement by the Arizona electorate of the Congressional maps that the Commission proposed. Only 25% of voters express support for the proposed lines with 34% opposed to them and an unsurprising 42% holding no opinion on this decidedly insider baseball issue.  Voters don't necessarily disagree with Brewer that the House map was flawed, they just disagree with the action she took to deal with the problem.

Brewer's approval rating has sunk to 42% with 49% of voters disapproving of her. The last time PPP found her with numbers that bad was in April of 2010, shortly before the signing of Senate Bill 1070, when she was at 35/46. There are two things helping to drive Brewer's poor ratings: Democrats (77%) are more unified in their disapproval of her than Republicans (69%) are in their approval and independents split against her by a 34/51 margin as well.

Despite Brewer's declining poll numbers there's little support for a recall of her. Only 32% of voters would support such a move to 58% who are opposed. There are a lot of voters don't like Brewer, but don't think she should be removed from office either.  This is particularly clear with independents who oppose a recall 25/59, even as they simultaneously give Brewer poor marks for her job performance.

In other Arizona polling findings:

-Voters in the state have a very positive opinion of Gabrielle Giffords, 61/17. She's seen favorably by Democrats (84/7), independents (49/15), and Republicans (46/26) alike. Despite Giffords' popularity there is significant doubt about whether she should run for reelection though- 32% of voters think she should seek another term in the House while 46% think she should not and 22% are unsure. It's hard to imagine Giffords losing if she does run again given her popularity and the fact that she managed to get reelected in the tough climate of 2010, but clearly there is some concern about her ability to serve.

-Arizona voters continue to support last year's sweeping immigration legislation, Senate Bill 1070, by a 57/35 margin. Republicans are pretty unanimous in their continued favor for the bill and independents (62/31) and even 30% of Democrats are happy with it as well. 

Despite SB 1070's popularity voters are also happy that State Senate President Russell Pearce, one of its key proponents, was recalled from office two weeks ago. 47% of voters were happy with the outcome of the recall election with 28% displeased and 25% having no opinion one way or the other. The disparity between public opinion about 1070 and Pearce himself suggests that Pearce's style may have hurt him with voters more than some of his actual positions.

-John McCain continues to be the most unpopular Senator in the country out of 87 current ones that PPP has polled on, at 34/55. His problem is that Republicans are pretty unenthusiastic about him with only 50% approving to 38% who disapprove.  There are other Senators whose party base feels tepid about them- Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, and Lindsey Graham come to mind- but they make up for it by being unusually popular across party lines. McCain does not- with independents he comes in at 23/66 and with Democrats he's at 24/68.

Outgoing Senator Jon Kyl isn't doing too hot either, with 41% of voters approving of him to 44% who disapprove. But Republicans at least give him good marks by a 68/20 spread, which allows him to outpace McCain.

-Joe Arpaio is more popular than Brewer, McCain, or Kyl but his poll numbers are on the decline too: 47% of voters express a favorable opinion of him to 45% with a negative one.  That's down a little bit from 49/42 when we polled about him in May and even more from 53/38 when we polled him last April.

Full results here

Comments

[Mark]

Something that may have been unpopular about Russell Pearce is that he hangs out with (and endorses) neo-Nazis.

[bww]

Thanks so much for testing the redistricting issues!

[TD]

Obama hung out with terrorists, racists, and Communists and managed to be elected President.

[jeff]

It will probably take much more on Brewer's part to be recalled. I don't see Arizona supporting a democratic gov candidate at this point because the republicans in that state out weight the democrats. Maybe in a year or so or if she does some more power out reaches support for recall will grow.

[Barbara Hanson]

I live in an AZ county for which the IRC chairman has gerrymandered the map and has not followed the Constitution's rules for redistricting. We are a community of interest and should have been kept together as we have been for the last 100 years. The 2 Democrats and Mathis on the commission apparently worked to skew the mapping in favor of Democrats and used "competitiveness" to the exclusion of community. This was done behind closed doors--another illegality! They also chose Strategic Telemetry and their vote cards scoring the company were destroyed. However they all gave the mapping company a perfect score. Just a coincidence? i think not! It was a company costing the most and was used by obama's campaign. Their map is a travesty to our community of interest---It is a textbook case of gerrymandering and is illegal.That is why I support Governor Brewer in her removing the woman who swore she was an Independent, but who is really a left leaning Dem--- Mathis. It's not over yet!

[Jay]

This business of recalling Governors at the whim of the opposition must come to an end. Recalls should only be done if the candidate has committed malfeasance in office. You shouldn't be recalling officials because you don't like their views or legislation. It will lead to instability in our political process and we will never accomplish anything because the losing party will start working on recalls making governing impossible. Recalls should be reserved for the most egregiousness actions. Otherwise, we should be waiting until the next election to try again. It appears Democrats want recalls when their candidates lose. When the Republicans start losing they will do the same thing and our system of government will breakdown completely.

[pbrower2a]

The low approvals for the Republican governor and two Republican senators elected statewide indicate that the GOP is wearing out its welcome in Arizona. The shift that took Colorado and Nevada from R to D a couple years ago is now underway in Arizona.

[Gary Bullock]

Gary Bullock ‎1. Firing Mathis in the First Place
2. Our educational system is in the dumps.
3. The all but total destruction of AHCCCS
4. Refusal to fire the Director of the ADOC Charles Ryan after the Kingman escape and about a billion other critical failures.
5. Appointing the Owner of Lobbyist Firm, Chuck Coughlin to be her Policy Adviser (Conflict of Interest)
6. Selling the state capitol and all of the states buildings (Like a tenant selling the house they rent)
7. Using her State Senate in session exemption as an out for drunk driving
8. Her uncanny ability to communicate.... :-)
9. Trying to privatize everything from prisons to the Grand Canyon
10. Her intense desire to fund and protect children who are listed as cases under CPS. (Sarcasm)

I wonder if everyone who took this survey was considering all of these issues. I bet if they were listed before them, they would likely have came in with MUCH LOWER NUMBERS.

[NRH]

What Republicans across the country have been doing any place where they have control is the most egregious misconduct since the Watergate era. Nakedly partisan power grabs (attempting to kill Democratic constituencies like labor unions), unconstitutional attacks on the rights to vote (via evidence-free demands for voter ID) and to privacy and personal freedoms (zygote personhood), and open attempts to rig the electoral process in their favor (attempts to bar college students from voting at their current, college address, as the Supreme Court has determined they may) absolutely merit recall efforts. These are all efforts Republicans have launched since the Fluke of 2010, and every time they've come before voters, they've been very soundly rejected.

[cindy larson]

She and Joe need to go See how Joe really lives on missing money AZ central will not allow comments against these people