Bachmann, Pawlenty weak at home

Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty's Presidential bids appear to have done serious damage to their future political prospects in Minnesota.

Bachmann comes home to only a 34% favorability rating, with 57% of voters seeing her negatively. Only 37% of voters statewide think she should run for reelection to her House seat, while 57% believe she should step down.

Pawlenty's numbers are better, but not by much. Only 39% of voters have a positive opinion of him to 50% with a negative one. Similarly just 39% say they would support him in a future bid for statewide office. while 51% say they definitely would not.

For both Bachmann and Pawlenty the most logical next move would be a run for the US Senate.  But their prospects in a bid wouldn't be very good for either this year or 2014.  In hypothetical 2012 match ups, Pawlenty and Bachmann trail Amy Klobuchar by margins of 54-39 and 58-35 respectively.  They do a little better against Al Franken in prospective 2014 bids with Pawlenty down 49-43 and Bachmann trailing 54-39.

Klobuchar continues to look close to unbeatable.  She has a 61% approval rating with 28% of voters disapproving of her. There are only 5 sitting Senators PPP has found with a higher approval rating than that. In addition to basically unanimous support from Democrats she's at better than 2:1 approval with independents (59/28) and has higher than normal crossover support from Republicans with a 32% approval.

Against her actual Republican opponents Klobuchar leads by margins ranging anywhere from 23-26 points.  She's up 55-32 on Dan Severson, 55-30 on Joe Arwood, and 55-29 on Anthony Hernandez. None of the GOP hopefuls have greater than 20% name recognition at this point so it's possible or even likely the race will tighten up a little bit once there's a nominee, but probably not enough to actually make the race competitive.

What might be a little more surprising than Klobuchar's strong standing is Al Franken's solid numbers. 49% of voters approve of him to 39% who disapprove, above average numbers for a Senator in a political climate marked by a very unhappy electorate. He's on slightly positive ground with independents and has a lot more Republicans (12%) who approve of him than Democrats (3%) who disapprove. When he won in 2008 a lot of folks thought it was a fluke and that he would be toast in a non-Democratic wave year, but it looks like he's played his cards right and should start out as a favorite for reelection in 2014 as long as it doesn't prove to be another huge GOP wave year.

Full results here

Comments

[Victor]

Where is the GOP primary info?

[anon]

Who are the five Senators higher than Klobuchar?

[pbrower2a]

It looks as if Michele Bachmann will be the most prominent Republican to lose a House seat as the result of th 2012 election.

[Jay]

Please advise what it means that the people of her state don't want Bachmann to run again for the House. You did the same thing with Eric Cantor in Virginia. If you are going to state those irrelevant numbers, how about polling their individual congressional districts which would more accurately reflect their respective standings in their own districts. By failing to poll in their own congressional districts, you leave the reader to conclude that they are unpopular there as well.

[Alan Snipes]

I agree with Jay. The only relevant polling about Bachmann would be to poll her district. Obviously, she has won three elections in that district so she obviously she has support there. Let me emphasize that I disagree with her on everything and I would not want her representing me.

[Todd Dugdale]

Jay:
It's not "irrelevant". It may be irrelevant to retaining her House seat, but it's not irrelevant to gauging her support in the State. It's not as if the majority of Minnesotans are content with Bachmann representing the 6th CD; they don't want her in *any office at all*. That's relevant in assessing her level and quality of support in MN.

PPP doesn't poll CDs, as Dustin as said here before.

Aside from that, Bachmann has always hinted at having broad state-wide support, and legions of Tea Party faithful eager to spring into action on her behalf. This poll shows that these narratives are hyperbole, and there is value in that.

In fact, the June poll showed that a plurality of MN Republicans want her to run for the Senate, so assessing her statewide support is relevant and a welcome follow-up.

[Dustin Ingalls]

"Who are the five Senators higher than Klobuchar?"

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/approval_chart/#senate

[Dustin Ingalls]

Jay: The Bachmann numbers are irrelevant when it comes to predicting her chances of re-election, but they still are what they are: a look at how she's viewed statewide. She's never been popular statewide, and that's even more the case now that she's run for president.

[pbrower2a]

If the highest-profile Republican members of the House are deeply unpopular in moderate D (MN) or moderate R (VA) states, then such suggests how unpopular the Republican party -- at least the Republican delegation to the US House -- is in those states.

Power within Congress and national prominence are usually highly desirable for winning re-election -- but not when one abuses power or takes a large number of unpopular positions.

The general Congressional ballot would be more appropriate for seeing how delegations would go in 2012. So far I see general ballots (not all of them by PPP) showing that current GOP-majority delegations in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania and even the even split in Colorado would be in peril.

[Jcar]

I'm in Minneota and Klobuchar is insanely popular here. She's pretty much unbeatable, I think.

And Franken has shown himself to be surprisingly popular--especially given what a polarizing figure he once was. The GOP here acted like he would be a total joke if elected, but he's pretty much kept his head down and done his job, which people here like. Part of the reason why Bachmann and Pawlenty are so unpopular here is because they (especially Bachman) seem more interested in getting on news shows than doing their jobs.

That said, Bachman's district is hardcore Republican. So if she were to rerun for congress she would most likely win.