Let's hear for it for bipartisan agreement! On average, Americans in blue states give their Democratic governors a 69% approval rating for their pandemic response, while 67% of those in red states approve of their governor's response, according to new polling from Washington Post-Ipsos.
But in the data collected by SurveyMonkey, Trump's coronavirus handling rated at 47% among all respondents. Frankly, that's pretty high compared to the bulk of national polls, which put Trump's coronavirus approvals at closer to the low-40s. Nonetheless, Trump managed to get lower ratings for his pandemic response than all but one of the 50 governors.
That governor was Georgia's Brian Kemp, who drew a paltry 43% approval from his constituents after dragging his feet on closing the state and then rushing to be among the first states to reopen. Kemp was dead even with Trump in this latest poll, a slight improvement from the Post-Ipsos battle ground poll last week in which just 39% of Georgians approved of Kemp's response.
Kemp's still strictly bottom-of-the-barrel on his pandemic response. He was the lowest-ranked governor among the dozen battleground state governors, and now he's secured the lowest spot among all 50 governors. Nothing like consistency.
Interestingly, GOP governors tended to dominate both the high and low ends of the scale. Here are the top five-rated governors and the lowest eight-rated governors.
Of course, the hardest hit states are disproportionately run by Democrats, and every one of those governors draws an approval rating of higher than 60%. Here are the rankings for the governors of the 11 hardest hit states in terms of total coronavirus cases.
- 1. NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), 75%
- 2. NJ Gov. Phil Murphy (D), 74%
- 3. IL Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D), 65%
- 4. MA Gov. Charlie Baker (R), 82%
- 5. CA Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), 72%
- 6. PA Gov. Tom Wolf (D), 64%
- 7. MI Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), 62%
- 8. TX Gov. Greg Abbott (R), 58%
- 9. FL Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), 58%
- 10. MD Gov. Larry Hogan (R), 85%
- 11. GA Gov. Brian Kemp (R), 43%
Hogan and Kemp happen to be the highest and lowest rated governors, respectively. But Kemp's approvals look especially dismal when compared to other governors who are handling high case loads in their states.
By the way, the results of this poll are very similar to the findings of a different massive survey last month that found Trump’s pandemic approvals sagging below every governor in all 50 states. Trump’s on a roll.