* Politico…
Gov. Bruce Rauner’s polling numbers are edging dangerously close to Mayor Rahm Emanuel territory. A new survey out today by Morning Consult shows Rauner’s approval dipped 8 percentage points to 34 percent since it conducted a similar survey last year.
The percentage of people who said they disapproved of the way that Rauner is doing his job went up by 9 points, giving him a disapproval rating of 54 percent. According to the Morning Consult rankings, Rauner is the sixth most unpopular governor in America. His numbers dropped during a period that saw an unprecedented Illinois’ budget stalemate persist, leaving social services in a lurch and a very public crisis in higher education that was only recently, partially resolved.
The poll results are here.
* However, a word of caution. This isn’t your usual poll. From an e-mail sent by the company…
More than 66,000 registered voters across America have evaluated the job performance of key elected officials on Morning Consult’s weekly online national polling from early January 2016 through May 5, 2016.
On each poll, Americans indicated whether they approved or disapproved of the job performance of President Barack Obama, their state Governor, both of their U.S. Senators, their Member of Congress and their mayor (if they lived in a city with more than about 10,000 residents). For each question, they could answer strongly approve, somewhat approve, somewhat disapprove, strongly disapprove, or don’t know / no opinion.
Morning Consult obtained an up-to-date list of Governors, U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives from Sunlight Foundation’s Congress API v3 and Open States API and obtained a list of mayors from the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Survey respondents were assigned to their appropriate Governor and both U.S. Senators based on their state of residence, assigned to their Member of Congress based on a combination of zip code, IP address, latitude and longitude, and assigned to their mayor based on their state and zip code.
Morning Consult obtained population parameters for registered voters from the November 2012 Current Population Survey (CPS) and applied post-stratification weights based on gender, age, educational attainment and race. Thus far, the median state includes a total of 883 respondents, the state with the most respondents is California (n = 5,968) and the state with the least respondents is Wyoming (n = 165).
Online polling conducted over five months. I dunno. Maybe.
* But there’s also this…
According to an April 8 poll commissioned by The Illinois Observer for our e-newsletter, The Insider, delivered to subscribers on April 15 (subscribe here) of 703 likely 2016 voters in the district of State Senator Melinda Bush (D-Crystal Lake), a top 2016 GOP target, voters blame Bush over Governor Bruce Rauner – 45.7%-32.2% – for the continuing budget stalemate. 22.1% are undecided.
The survey has a +/- 3.75% margin of error.
Additionally, the poll finds that Bush’s job approval is upside down with just 29.5% approving and 41.3% disapproving. 28.2% are undecided.
That’s a dramatic reversal from a July 6 survey of 556 likely voters commissioned by The Insider that had found that Bush had a 22.3% job approval rate from voters and a 18.5% disapproval or a net positive of 4-points and a whopping 58% were undecided.
That survey, conducted by Chicago-based Ogden & Fry, had a +/- 4.24% margin of error.
As I told you the other day, incumbent legislators are shouldering the blame for this impasse and there are a whole lot more Democratic incumbents than Republicans.
We need a budget deal, man.
