Striking while the iron is hot, our friends at Public Policy Polling have a
raft of new poll numbers related to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, the whole redistricting mess she's created, and a hypothetical recall. First up, the good news (for us—bad news for her):
Brewer's approval rating has sunk to 42% with 49% of voters disapproving of her. The last time PPP found her with numbers that bad was in April of 2010, shortly before the signing of Senate Bill 1070, when she was at 35/46. There are two things helping to drive Brewer's poor ratings: Democrats (77%) are more unified in their disapproval of her than Republicans (69%) are in their approval and independents split against her by a 34/51 margin as well.
What could be causing this drop? Here's one possibility:
Only 31% of voters support Brewer removing Colleen Mathis as chair of the Redistricting Commission, to 43% who oppose her move. Republicans agree with what Brewer did by a 54/16 margin but Democrats are even more unified in their displeasure with her action, 13/72. Independents think Brewer did the wrong thing by a 19/41 margin as well.
Unfortunately, this doesn't mean voters support the Redistricting Commission's work, though:
The unhappiness with Brewer's actions shouldn't be taken as an endorsement by the Arizona electorate of the Congressional maps that the Commission proposed. Only 25% of voters express support for the proposed lines with 34% opposed to them and an unsurprising 42% holding no opinion on this decidedly insider baseball issue. Voters don't necessarily disagree with Brewer that the House map was flawed, they just disagree with the action she took to deal with the problem.
But here's the real bad news:
Despite Brewer's declining poll numbers there's little support for a recall of her. Only 32% of voters would support such a move to 58% who are opposed. There are a lot of voters [who] don't like Brewer, but don't think she should be removed from office either. This is particularly clear with independents who oppose a recall 25/59, even as they simultaneously give Brewer poor marks for her job performance.
Oof. I wasn't expecting such rough numbers on a potential recall. Even if would-be organizers could obtain sufficient signatures, they'd still need to find a candidate to take on Brewer in a recall. And with sentiment so strongly against a possible recall, recruitment would be difficult—let alone running an actual race. But things can certainly change, and if Brewer goes ahead with her nascent plans to re-impeach Mathis, they can definitely get worse for her.