Raleigh, N.C. – Over the course of four months starting last October, PPP asked American voters nationally what their impressions of each state are. Hawaii came out on top, by far, with California bringing up the rear.
Americans generally have a favorable view of most states. Only five are in negative territory, led by California (27% favorable and 44% unfavorable), Illinois (19-29), New Jersey (25-32), Mississippi (22-28), and Utah (24-27). Only seven other states have net-positive ratings in the single digits, and another breaks even (Louisiana).
Over the course of four months starting last October, we asked American voters nationally what their impressions of each state are. Hawaii came out on top, by far, with California bringing up the rear.
Raleigh, N.C. – In its latest national poll, in the first of a three-part series, PPP asked American voters how they feel about 17 different states. Of this first bunch, Texas is the most polarizing—it has both the highest favorability and highest unfavorability rating. Pennsylvania matches Texas in favor and has much less disfavor, making it the most popular. The least liked are Illinois and Mississippi, two of only three (along with Utah) which more voters see negatively than positively.
Over the next 3 months PPP will be polling the favorability of all 50 states as part of its national surveys, in order to determine the most popular and least popular ones in the country. We started off this month with the first 17. Here's how they stack up from best net favorability to worst:
As the year comes to a close I thought it might be interesting to relive the five polls we did that surprised me the most over the course of what was an election cycle full of surprises:
5) Arkansas Senate Poll, January 29th-31st. If you'd asked me at this time last year I would have told you I thought Arkansas would be among the 2 or 3 states we polled most often in 2010. Blanche Lincoln had horrible approval numbers throughout the last part of 2009 but she also had a weak Republican candidate field going against her so even though she was trailing in a lot of polling it wasn't by insurmountable margins and it seemed like she might be able to make a comeback once the health care issue that was killing her was in the rear view mirror. Then John Boozman started showing interest in the race and we were first out of the gate in polling that match up. I figured Lincoln would be in a lot of trouble, down 10 or so. She was down by 23! We never polled the race again the rest of the year and it never changed much from that initial benchmark. She lost by 21.
4) Kentucky Republican Senate Primary Poll, December 18th-21st 2009. In retrospect this poll was one of the biggest early signs that it was going to be a very rough cycle for establishment Republicans. It seems hard to believe after blowout victories in both the primary and general elections but for most of 2009 national political observers saw Rand Paul's Senate campaign as an amusing sidebar, giving its viability little credence with the Republican regulars in the state lined up behind Trey Grayson. Then we polled it and not only did we find Grayson trailing- we found Grayson trailing by 19 points! Whatever happened over the last half of 2009 to put Grayson so far behind he never recovered from- every single independent poll for the whole rest of the campaign found him down by double digits.
3) Florida Republican Senate Primary Poll, March 5th-8th. It was already abundantly clear that Charlie Crist was in deep, deep trouble before we took our first stab at the race- a Rasmussen poll the month before had shown him down by 18 points. But it was still pretty shocking to find him down by 32 points at 60-28. It took about five minutes for the Crist campaign to get out a release attacking the poll as 'agenda driven' and designed to help the Rubio campaign. The Florida Times-Union was so shocked that they commissioned their own snap poll on the race...and found Crist down by 34. At that point it started to be seen as only a matter of time before Crist threw in the towel on being the Republican nominee and he did late the next month.
2) Delaware Republican Senate Primary Poll, September 11th-12th. We did a Delaware Senate poll in mid-August and didn't even bother taking a look at the primary race. That's how far fetched the thought of Mike Castle losing the primary was at that point. After Joe Miller's shocking victory in the Alaska Senate GOP contest we decided we would do a Delaware primary poll the weekend before the election just to cover our bases. Still, when even the Tea Party Express' own polling leaked the week before the election showed O'Donnell behind we didn't expect to see much. But after starting the poll Saturday morning of that weekend, it was clear by the middle of Saturday afternoon that at worst the race was 50/50 and that it was more likely O'Donnell was ahead. She was up 3 when we tallied it up and I was probably more nervous for the 48 hours between releasing that poll and the election results coming in than I was at any other point in the cycle because the result was so surprising and there was no other polling company backing us up. If we were wrong there wasn't going to be anyone to break our fall. But fortunately we weren't- it really seemed possible at the time that 30,000 Republicans in Delaware were going to cost their party control of the Senate although Democrats winning most of the toss up races kept that from being the case in the end.
1) Massachusetts Senate Poll, January 7th-9th. The final week of 2009 we had a vote on where we should do our first poll of 2010 and Massachusetts was one of the options. It finished third behind Connecticut and Alabama. That's how off the radar Scott Brown's chances were just two and a half weeks before the special election. Then Rasmussen came out with a poll showing Brown behind by only 9 that got people paying attention, but still it's not too often that someone manages to go from a 9 point lead to losing in a two week span, especially if it's not a primary. So we polled it mostly just to confirm the new conventional wisdom that Democrats needed to not take it for granted, but that they didn't have that much to worry about. I remember we started the poll up during the BCS Championship game and it was clear by about halftime that Democrats had a whole lot more to worry about in Massachusetts than just about anyone realized. When we put the poll out Saturday night Brown was up by 1 and his momentum carried on to a 5 point victory over the final week.
It's been a great year for PPP, thanks to everyone for their support and Happy New Year!
It's nice for Blanche Lincoln that she won the runoff in Arkansas last night but I hope that no groups that care about getting Democratic Senators elected spend another dollar in the state this year. That doesn't have anything to do with her ideology- judging her worthwhileness there is not part of my job as a pollster- but there are just a boatload of races where Democrats have a better chance to win this fall and could use their resources more wisely.
There hasn't been a non-Research 2000 poll showing her down by anything less than 17 points to John Boozman in over three months. Our last survey of the race found her down by 23. Contests where we've found Democrats doing better than Lincoln since that poll include:
-The South Carolina Senate race where we found Vic Rawl, who actually lost the primary last night to a nobody, trailing Jim DeMint by just 19.
-The Georgia Senate race where in March we saw Johnny Isakson up just 9 points against a generic Democratic candidate before the party recruited a strong challenger, Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, into the race.
-The Arizona Senate race where John McCain led little known challenger Rodney Glassman only 49-33 in late April.
And those decidedly second tier races where we've seen Democratic candidates faring better than Lincoln are just in addition to the obvious pick up opportunities the party has in places like North Carolina, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio.
Between Barack Obama's unpopularity in her state and her own problems Lincoln is pretty much bound to be the Rick Santorum of this cycle- down a ton early and not ever able to really come close to catching up. National Democratic groups should use their resources elsewhere.
If Joe Sestak and Bill Halter win their primaries on Tuesday night there's going to be a lot of media temptation to declare it a huge night for the party's left...but is that really what's going on in those races?
Unfortunately the Pennsylvania and Arkansas primary polls have been short on crosstabs by ideological identification. But there have been some signs that's not really what's driving Sestak and Halter's momentum.
Let's look at Quinnipiac's polls for example. In early April when Arlen Specter led Sestak 53-32, 35% of the voters they surveyed said they saw Specter as the more 'consistently liberal' candidate. On Quinnipiac's most recent poll the Specter lead was all the way down to 44-42. But that 35% of voters identifying Specter as more 'consistently liberal' was unchanged. There was a 19 point reduction in Specter's lead over that period of time, but no change in voter perception of his ideology.
That makes me question an interpretation of a potential Sestak victory as the Democratic left pushing Specter out of office. It seems more like an anti-incumbent/desire for a new face thing than an ideological one.
I haven't seen any polling data by ideology in the Arkansas race, but when we last polled the state in February Blanche Lincoln's numbers within her party were actually their best with liberals. They gave her a 57/28 approval spread to 50/34 with moderates and 46/44 with conservatives. Those numbers suggest that if Halter wins or sends the race to a runoff it'll probably have just as much do with him pulling conservative and moderate Democrats away from Lincoln as liberal ones.
I hope some of the final polls in these races will release results by ideology, because I'm just not sure based on the data I've seen that the closeness in these races is due to backlash from liberal voters.
One of the interesting things about the Senate primaries so far is the amount of support candidates who got absolutely no attention are pulling on election day. In the Illinois Republican primary candidates other than Mark Kirk and Patrick Hughes got 24%. In the North Carolina Democratic one candidates other than Elaine Marshall, Cal Cunningham, and Kenneth Lewis got 19%. In the Indiana Republican contest candidates who weren't Dan Coats, Marlin Stutzman, and John Hostettler got 9%. And in the Illinois Democratic primary candidates below the top tier of Alexi Giannoulias, David Hoffman, and Cheryle Jackson pulled 8%.
Who cares? This trend has implications for next week's Democratic primary in Arkansas. Given the willingness of voters in past primaries to choose candidates with no chance of winning it seems more realistic that the third candidate in the race- D.C. Morrison- could pick up enough support to force a runoff in the race between Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter. Morrison picked up 10% in one poll last month and if he can really get that at the polls next week and there's less than 10% separating the two front runners in the race it will keep either Lincoln or Halter from getting the 50% necessary to win the nomination outright.
We haven't been polling the Arkansas race so I don't know what the chances of those things happening are, but given the surprising support non serious candidates have been getting in other Senate primaries it would not be shocking to see Morrision hit double digits or close to it.
Things may look better for Democratic prospects in four key Senate races a month from now, once the party has chosen its nominees. That's because in Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania there are a lot more undecided Democrats than Republicans as hotly contested primaries play themselves out.
On average there are 7% more undecided Democrats than Republicans in those contests. Those folks coming home won't provide much immediate aid in Arkansas where Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter were both well behind on our last poll, but in 50/50 races like Ohio and Pennsylvania it could make the difference between a slight Republican edge and a tie or a tie and a slight Democratic advantage. And it could pull Cal Cunningham or Elaine Marshall within the margin of error against Richard Burr and get folks really paying attention to what a legitimate opportunity the party has to play some offense in that state.
It's not a given that Democrats will come together and cause those races to tighten up a little bit once they're unified around a single candidate, but I think it's likely.
Jon Corzine's approval was a net -23 on our final poll before the New Jersey Governor's race, with 34% of voters in the state giving him good marks and 57% bad ones. Anyone polling below the Corzine line seems like a pretty good bet to be defeated.
There are actually only three politicians up for reelection this year in our recent polling who find themselves in that category. One is Blanche Lincoln at 27/62, who most political observers do expect to lose. Another is Deval Patrick at 22/59. He may be saved by the presence of a third party candidate in his race but it's still really hard to see him surviving with those kind of approval numbers. The third is Pat Quinn, whose approval is 25/53 in numbers we'll release tomorrow. That's pretty unpopular but it's also a really Democratic state- will the negative feelings about Quinn or the overall blue tone of the state dictate what happens this fall? We'll give you some early answers tomorrow.
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