Poll: Paul Ryan favorability collapses (except inside the Republican bubble)

The cover to the Ryan plan, revisited
 

Check this out, from PPP:

When we polled on Ryan in December his favorability was a positive 38/30 spread. Now it's a negative 41/46 spread. That's a 13 point net shift in the wrong direction for him over the last five months. He's up up 10 points with Republicans from +55 (61/6) to +65 (77/12). But that's more than outweighed by his being down 34 points with Democrats from -35 (16/51) to -69 (10/79). And he's down 9 points with independents from +10 (39/29) to +1 (43/42). Ryan's prudent not to run for the state's open seat given his decline in popularity on the home front.

The thing that's so striking about this is that even as Paul Ryan's stock with the GOP base is soaring (up 10 in net favorability), it is collapsing among Democrats (down 34) and independents (down 9). Exciting the base is a good thing, but Ryan isn't just exciting his own base, he's also exciting the Democratic base while simultaneously losing support from independents.

These are significant datapoints because Republicans have responded to their surprising defeat in NY-26 by blaming the messenger. They say Jane Corwin lost because she didn't know how to sell the GOP/RyanCare plan for Medicare.

And the person who they think sells it better than anyone else? None other than Paul Ryan. Earlier today, for example, Karl Rove, the GOP political mastermind, urged Republicans to use Ryan as a model for how to sell the substance of their plan to end Medicare as we know it. "A good starting point is Mr. Ryan's message," he said.

Given Mr. Ryan's new favorability numbers, I couldn't agree with him more.