(
Bumped because these numbers are nothing short of dramatic, from our top Republican targets, to Bush's favorite Democrat himself -- kos.)
This month's SUSA Senate polling features some fun facts. For instance, did you know who has the highest ratings among the U.S. Senate? That would be Ben Nelson, at 73% approval. Actually, this is something that should strike a tiny bit of terror in the hearts of Republicans everywhere. Seven out of the 10 most popular Senators are Democrats. What's more, the other three are Collins, Snowe, and Jeffords. Out of the top 20 most popular Senators, 13 are Democrats.
Among those races of particular interest to us, seven GOP Senators running for reelection this year are below 50%: Kyl (45%), Burns (39%), Santorum (39%), Talent (48%), DeWine (48%), and Ensign at 49%. And only two Senators have disapproval ratings over 50% - Conrad Burns and Rick Santorum. Both Burns and Santorum have net negative approval ratings in the double digits. Santorum's net approval rating fell nine points to negative 14, the highest net disapproval rating of all 100 senators. In the last month, Kyl's disapproval rating jumped from 36% to 42%. Talent's net approval rating fell from 13 to just 5 points, with 43% of Missourians expressing their disappointment with their Senator.
On our side, ctblogger looks closely at Lieberman's numbers, comparing them to last month's:
Among Liberals:
(3/13/06) 49% approve, 41% disapprove, 10% undecided
(4/10/06) 46% approve, 49% disapprove, 5% undecided
Among Democrats:
(3/13/06) 56% approve, 35% disapprove, 8% undecided
(4/10/06) 54% approve, 41% disapprove, 5% undecided
Is it the Lamont campaign making a dent? Lieberman's willingness to jump the Democratic ship to keep his seat? Or his undying love for a president who has a 27% approval rating in Connecticut? Either way, Lieberman has to be pretty worried.
Update [2006-4-21 1:17:13 by mcjoan]: Stealing from DavidNYC over at Swing State:
Look again at Lieberman's performance among indies. Notice anything? It stands at 53-41 - a point worse than his approval among Dems! And Joe didn't just "take a hit" (as I say above) with independents - he utterly cratered in the last month. He was at 63-29, a 34-point spread. Since then, he dropped a whopping 22 points to just +12 - his fall with Dems was only from +21 to +13. I'm not sure what bearing this might have on the primary, but the numbers are pretty stunning in my mind.