Public Policy Polling

Americans love Hawaii, dislike California

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).

State favorability poll

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.

State	+/-	Margin
Hawaii	54-10	44
Colorado	44-9	35
Tennessee	48-14	34
South Dakota	42-8	34
Virginia	45-13	32
Montana	39-7	32
Alaska	46-17	29
Oregon	43-14	29
North Carolina	40-11	29
Pennsylvania	40-11	29
Washington	43-17	26
Kentucky	42-16	26
Iowa	42-17	25
Oklahoma	40-16	24
Vermont	39-15	24
Wisconsin	40-17	23
Wyoming	34-11	23
Florida	43-21	22
North Dakota	33-11	22
Missouri	32-11	21
New Hampshire	37-18	19
Indiana	31-12	19
Idaho	30-11	19
Nebraska	29-11	18
Arizona	39-22	17
Michigan	38-21	17
Maine	32-15	17
Ohio	34-18	16
Delaware	32-16	16
Maryland	31-15	16
South Carolina	34-19	15
New Mexico	30-15	15
Kansas	28-13	15
New York	40-29	11
Georgia	31-20	11
Minnesota	27-17	10
Rhode Island	26-16	10
Texas	40-31	9
Massachusetts	35-27	8
West Virginia	23-15	8
Arkansas	25-20	5
Connecticut	26-22	4
Nevada	28-26	2
Alabama	27-26	1
Louisiana	24-24	0
Utah	24-27	-3
Mississippi	22-28	-6
New Jersey	25-32	-7
Illinois	19-29	-10
California	27-44	-17

SD GOP wants Thune for pres., Palin if Thune declines

Raleigh, N.C. – Results PPP released Tuesday showed John Thune as the only candidate who would clearly blow President Obama out of the water in Thune’s home state of South Dakota, an eternally red state which could otherwise turn marginally competitive, especially if Sarah Palin is the nominee.  Thune’s Republican base in the state wants to give him that nomination by a 3:1 margin over the next closest competitor, but if he chooses to stay out, the primary contest would be a four-way statistical tie.

Thune does well at home

John Thune is the strong choice of South Dakota Republicans to be their nominee for President next year. 37% say he would be their top pick to 12% for Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, 11% for Mike Huckabee, 10% for Newt Gingrich, 5% for Ron Paul, 2% for Tim Pawlenty, and 1% for Mitch Daniels.

Thune's performance in his home state may seem unremarkable- you would expect a native son candidate to do well. This is actually more the exception than the rule in PPP's 2012 Republican polling though. Mitt Romney does very well in Massachusetts, polling at 47%. But beyond that Tim Pawlenty gets just 24% in Minnesota, Jim DeMint 24% in South Carolina, Sarah Palin 15% in Alaska, Rick Santorum 11% in Pennsylvania, and Rick Perry 9% in Texas. There was a little discussion last week about the possibility of native son candidates returning to the nomination picture in 2012, but in most of the states we've polled Republicans don't seem real interested in supporting their home state candidates.

South Dakota's not going to be terribly relevant to either the Republican nomination process or the general election next year but it seems to me that a good first test for whether you're going to be viable at the Presidential level is whether your current constituents like you and on that front Thune fares a lot better than most of the rest of the GOP potentials.

If you take Thune out of the picture in South Dakota Sarah Palin nabs a rare first place finish, albeit by the smallest of margins. She gets 21% to 19% for Huckabee, 17% for Romney, 12% for Gingrich, 7% for Paul, 5% for Pawlenty, and 1% for Daniels. The most noteworthy thing there might be Pawlenty's low level of support- you would expect him to do better in a neighboring state.

Full results here

Noem, Herseth Sandlin still deadlocked

Raleigh, N.C. – Popular former at-large Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin was one of the casualties of the Republican wave election last November, falling to Kristi Noem by just over two points in one of the closest battles of the season.  In PPP’s first test of a potential rematch for 2012, Herseth Sandlin leads by a single point.

Herseth Sandlin was first elected in a special election in 2004, re-upped that fall at the same time as longtime Democratic leader Tom Daschle was defeated by John Thune, and sent to two more terms in 2006 and 2008.   She remains extremely well liked, with a 55-36 favorability margin, which pales Noem’s meager 38-35 approval rating for her short time in office so far.  Even 28% of Republicans have positive views of Herseth Sandlin, and independents favor her by a 65-27 margin.  Noem, meanwhile, has a 31-42 standing with unaffiliated voters, and she polarizes the two parties.

South Dakota Miscellany

-Stephanie Herseth Sandlin may be the poster child for how thoroughly nationalized last year's House races got, with how voters felt about the candidates themselves taking a back seat to how they generally felt about the direction of the country. 55% of South Dakota voters have a favorable opinion of her to only 36% with a negative one. That puts her in about the 90th percentile of popularity for all the politicians we poll on. And she lost anyway.

Herseth Sandlin would be viable in a hypothetical rematch against Kristi Noem. She leads 46-45, including a 52-31 advantage with independents. Herseth Sandlin only lost by a couple points last year so her polling three points better on the margin now than she did in November seems pretty consistent with the national shift toward the Democrats over the last three months.

Noem's only been in office for a month so it's no surprise that voters don't have really strong opinions about her performance so far- 38% think she's doing a good job, 35% a bad one, and 27% have no opinion.

-Tim Johnson has pretty solid approval numbers with 47% of voters approving of him and 41% disapproving. The Democratic base is pretty unified in their approval of him, he's very popular with independents at a 54/34 spread, and 21% of Republicans think he's doing a good job which is at least a little bit ahead of the national curve when it comes to crossover popularity. He's not nearly as popular as Herseth Sandlin though so it's a pretty darn good thing for Democrats that he wasn't up for reelection last year and isn't next.

-Tom Daschle and George McGovern may have both seen their careers in elected office end in defeat at the ballot box in South Dakota, but with the passage of time the state's voters look back favorably on both of them. 49% have a favorable opinion of Daschle to 41% with a negative one and 42% give McGovern positive reviews to 29% who have an unfavorable opinion of him. Both are pretty universally well liked by the Democratic base and have very solid numbers with independents, but only 19% each are rated favorably by Republicans and in a strongly GOP leaning state that lack of crossover appeal is why they eventually lost their Senate seats.

-Finally, new Governor Dennis Daugaard starts out his tenure with decent numbers at 43% approving and 33% disapproving.

Full results here

Obama beats Palin, Gingrich in S.D., Thune would rout

Raleigh, N.C. – Unless the GOP nominates favorite son John Thune, South Dakota could become a marginally competitive presidential swing state in 2012.  President Obama lost to John McCain by less than nine points in 2008, closer than the state usually comes to turning blue.  But the president trails Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, the two strongest challengers right now, by respective 47-41 and 46-40 margins, and beats Newt Gingrich, 44-42, and Sarah Palin, 48-40.  Thune, however, would put the state out of reach, winning it, 57-37.

Palin, Thune numbers interesting in South Dakota

There are two interesting story lines for next year's Presidential race in South Dakota: it's one of the few states we've polled that responds positively to a home state candidate and despite the fact that a Democrat hasn't won it in a Presidential contest since 1964 Barack Obama leads Sarah Palin by 8 points there.

John McCain took the state by 8 points in 2008 and if Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee next year they'd win by margins similar to that. Huckabee leads Obama 47-41 and Romney has an identical 6 point advantage at a 46-40 spread.

If the GOP went with Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin as its nominee Obama's prospects for picking up the state would improve dramatically. Against Gingrich he holds a slight lead at 44-42 and pitted against Palin that increases to a somewhat remarkable 48-40.

The one potential candidate who would completely blow Obama out of the water is John Thune. He leads the President by 20 points in a hypothetical contest, 57-37. Thune is the first of the potential Republican candidates we've polled who's really done well in their home state. Tim Pawlenty trails Obama in Minnesota by a wider margin than Romney does. Rick Perry ties Obama in Texas even as the rest of the Republican candidates lead him. Chris Christie is down double digits in New Jersey and doesn't do any better than Romney or Huckabee. We haven't tested any head to heads in Alaska but voters there hate Sarah Palin now. Mitt Romney does better than the other Republicans in Masschusetts but still trails by a wide margin and Rick Santorum can't even finish in the top four for a primary contest in Pennsylvania. So South Dakota's strong support of a Thune run is more the exception than the rule in our 2012 polling to date.

Thune's strong showing is no surprise given that he's one of the most popular Senators in the country. His home state approval rating is 58% with only 31% of voters disapproving of him. He has near universal support from within his own party but he also gets good marks for his job performance from a third of Democrats, far more support than most folks in his position across the country get from across the aisle.

Obama's slightly unpopular in the state with 42% of voters approving of him and 49% disapproving. He's ahead of both Gingrich and Palin though because they're more unpopular than that. Gingrich's favorability is a 31/43 spread and Palin's is even worse at 37/55. Voters there are positive toward Huckabee, with 40% rating him favorably to 30% with a negative opinion, and a small plurality like Romney as well- 35% favorable, 34% unfavorable.

In the last two weeks we've found Palin up 1 point in Texas, up 1 point in Nebraska, and down 8 points in South Dakota. What those numbers indicate is that she would only really be safe in states that Republicans won by at least 20 points in 2008. And there weren't very many of those. It's becoming clearer and clearer that a Palin nomination would be Goldwater redux for the GOP. They need a new face and it will be interesting to see if John Thune gets in whether voters other places will respond as positively to him as those in South Dakota too. One thing's for sure: his home state support is at least one thing that differentiates him out of the gate from the other Republicans seriously considering the race.

Full results here

Not much support on the homefront

Our polling is making it more and more clear: no one seems to want their home state politicians running for President in 2012:

-Last July we found only 27% of Louisiana voters thought Bobby Jindal should make a bid for the White House while 61% said he should not.

-In December we found 28% of South Dakota voters wanted John Thune to run for President while 55% did not.

-Also in December we found that in MN-6, the state's most Republican leaning Congressional district, only 32% wanted Tim Pawlenty to launch a national campaign with 50% opposed to the idea.

-And on our South Carolina poll this week there was only 15% support for a Jim DeMint 2012 campaign with 56% opposed.

It's hard to know what to make of these numbers. In the Jindal and Thune cases it may be an indication that voters want them to stay right where they are because they like them- they've posted some of the best approval ratings of any politicians in the country over the last couple years. Pawlenty and DeMint aren't all that popular though so voters in their states may just think they're not up to the task.

Voters also might be concerned that their politicians running for President could bring embarrassment upon their states. As someone who lives in the same county as John Edwards, I certainly can't blame them.

Tim Johnson's Standing

One of the more interesting findings in our South Dakota poll was that voters in the state are pretty evenly divided in their feelings about Tim Johnson, with 46% approving of his job performance and 45% disapproving.

It shouldn't be a big surprise that South Dakotans have mixed feelings about Johnson- he won his Senate seat 51-49 in 1996 and then won reelection just 50-49 in 2002. But he won an easy reelection last year against weak Republican opposition in the aftermath of serious health problems that emerged in late 2006.

Johnson's numbers compared unfavorably to those of Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, perhaps because he has been more supportive of the agenda of President Obama and Congressional Democrats who sport 41% and 28% approval ratings respectively with voters in the state. Johnson has limited crossover support now, with 24% of Republicans approving of his job performance compared to 42% who approve of Herseth Sandlin. He has, however, maintained a higher level of popularity with the party base at 75% approval to 63% for his House colleague.

Johnson's numbers don't really matter all that much at this point though with his next reelection battle five years away. I think Republicans would have a slight advantage for this seat if it was up in 2010 but timing is everything in politics, especially when it comes to Senators. Look for example at the fate of Richard Burr- he squeaked in in a good year for the GOP in 2004 and now it looks like he'll stand for reelection in another good Republican year. If he'd been up in 2006 or 2008 he might have been as good as done.

Whether South Dakota Republicans like it or not, after not giving Johnson a strong challenge in 2008 they've got him for another five years.