Popular Pat?
Published November 24, 2015
by John Wynne, Politics North Carolina, November 24, 2015.
According to the website Morning Consult, Pat McCrory is Mr. Popularity. Their survey of North Carolina voters (part of a poll of over 75,000 voters nationally) the governor has a 51% approval rating. 36% disapprove of his performance.
While these are good numbers, McCrory is actually in the middle of the pack when it comes to how favorably governors are viewed by their constituents. Morning Consult finds that most of the public think their governors are doing just fine – just ten of them have disapproval ratings higher than their approval ratings. The most unpopular – Sam Brownback of Kansas, with a 26/65 approval spread, and Bobby Jindal, 35/60.
McCrory should be relieved that he’s not looking at those kinds of numbers. So what happened to him being the most vulnerable governor up for reelection, headed for a tough contest against Roy Cooper? If Morning Consult’s numbers are accurate, that’s probably not in the cards. If 51% approve of McCrory’s job performance, while only 36% disapprove, that doesn’t portend a Governor Cooper. For those who are thinking maybe McCrory’s job performance shot up in the wake of the Paris attacks and the controversy over Syrian refugees, nope: this survey was conducted well before that.
The problem for Governor McCrory, of course, is that this firm might be, and probably is, wrong. They certainly disagree with what other pollsters have for Governor Pat. Then again, they’ve never been in agreement on just how popular or unpopular he is. The last poll from PPP had him at 36/49 (that spells deep trouble). High Point has him at 42/45. The latest one from Civitas had him at 46/42 favorability, which is of course different than approval but not drastically so – unless there’s a significant number of people who like McCrory as a person but don’t like his policies.
What to do when there’s such disagreement? Resort to the tried-and-true “average ’em up” trick. Doing so yields an approval rating for McCrory of 44% and a disapproval rating of 43%. The one thing that all the polls agree upon? There’s still a whole lot of people who don’t know what to think about the governor and his administration.
Here’s a safe bet: McCrory, Cooper, both political parties and independent groups are going to spend a lot of money next year to help these people come to a conclusion.
