-PPP's newest poll of Pennsylvania finds there's still a fair amount of support for Joe Paterno in the state, although his image has taken somewhat of a hit. 45% of voters in the state see him favorably to 37% with a negative opinion. That represents a net 15 point decline from a November survey when he was at +23 (51/28). By a 48/35 margin respondents expressed opposition to removing his statue from the Penn State campus, something that ended up happening in the middle of the poll's Saturday-Monday field period.
50% of voters in the state now express a favorable opinion of the university as a whole to 31% who see it negatively. That's down from 61/25 the last time we asked about it. Finally, 94% of Pennsylvanians have a negative view of Jerry Sandusky to 2% with a positive one. Those represent the worst poll numbers we've ever found for any public figure.
-Bob Casey remains favored in the Pennsylvania Senate race, but it's tightened over the couple months since PPP last polled it. He's up 46-36 on Republican challenger Tom Smith, compared to 49-33 on our May poll. Casey continues to have pretty so so approval numbers with an equal 36% giving him good marks and disapproving of him. That's largely due to a lack of enthusiasm for him among Democrats but most of his party is committed to voting for him in the fall whether it loves him or not and when you combine that with a 42/32 advantage among independents and a decent 14% crossover support from Republicans it gives him his 10 point lead.
It appears likely Smith will at least improve on Rick Santorum's performance against Casey in 2006, which probably says more about Santorum than anything else.
-While many of the class of 2010 Republican Governors have seen their numbers improve considerably in our recent polling- Michigan's Rick Snyder, Ohio's John Kasich, and of course Wisconsin's Scott Walker come to mind- there's been no such movement for Tom Corbett as he approaches the midpoint of his first term. Only 32% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 49% who disapprove. Even with Republicans he's at 47/28. He trails a generic Democratic opponent for reelection by a 45/39 margin. Obviously a long way to go for him and some of his counterparts have shown that you can come back from these numbers but for now he's in a pretty weak position.
-And finally we found 58/37 support for Pennsylvania's voter ID law. Republicans are pretty much unanimous in their support, independents favor it 55/41, and it even meets with favor from 35% of Democrats.
Full results here
I love that you hide the support for the voter ID law in a tiny paragraph at the end. Didn't find the result that you were looking for? The people support it and see through the political hype that the dems raise against it.
Posted by: Dustin | July 26, 2012 at 03:07 PM
Re: voter ID - bad policy is still bad policy, no matter how much public support it has at the time. The Iraq war had pretty solid poll numbers for a while, too.
Posted by: Ben | July 26, 2012 at 06:15 PM
Please Dustin, the voter ID law doesn't matter all that much. A little bit of voter education will go a long way.
Take off your rose-colored glasses and see the truth.
Posted by: Not Dustin | July 27, 2012 at 02:15 AM
Is that why you only did 10% independent so it look more like the rep are for the ID law. 10 independent polled what a joke!!!!
Posted by: stephen | July 27, 2012 at 07:34 AM
People support the voter ID because they buy into the Republican rhetoric" why not, everyone has an ID. You need it for everything these days". The truth is almost 1 million registered voters in PA do not have the "proper" ID to exercise their right to vote and will have to put out money to get it. Can you say Democracy?
Posted by: cathy brady | July 29, 2012 at 01:05 PM