Big State, Low Recognition?

One of the things I'm interested in when looking at our approval ratings for Senators is the level of ambiguity voters in each state have toward their representatives in Washington. It ranges from 46% not having any opinion about Michael Bennet in Colorado when we first polled on him in January shortly after his appointment to only 9% having no opinion about Mitch McConnell in Kentucky probably because he's been in office forever and is on tv all the time:

Senator	% of voters with no opinion	State’s Electoral Votes
Michael Bennet (Colorado)	46	9
Johnny Isakson (Georgia)	45	15
Ted Kaufman (Delaware)	41	3
Mel Martinez (Florida)	40	27
Richard Burr (North Carolina)	34	15
Kay Hagan (North Carolina)	34	15
George Voinovich (Ohio)	32	20
Bill Nelson (Florida)	29	27
Jim Webb (Virginia)	23	13
Jim Bunning (Kentucky)	18	8
Tom Carper (Delaware)	17	3
Kit Bond (Missouri)	16	11
Mark Pryor (Arkansas)	16	6
John McCain (Arizona)	16	10
Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas)	15	6
Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota)	13	10
Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas)	11	34
Mitch McConnell (Kentucky)	9	8

There is a pretty strong relationship here between the size of the state and the level of ambiguity toward their Senators. Seven of the nine Senators with the greatest percentage of voters having no opinion about them come from states with at least 13 electoral votes. The only exceptions are appointed Senators- Bennet and Kaufman- who have never had to stand before the voters. Out of the nine Senators whose constituents have the highest level of familiarity with them, only one comes from a state that has more than 11 electoral voters. That's Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas, and that fact certainly helps to explain why the Governor's office is probably going to be hers for the taking barring some major shift in perceptions about her in the next year.

So it does seem that it's a lot easier for Senators from smaller states to keep up higher levels of visbility and name recognition. And looking at the folks near the top of the list who are up for reelection in 2010 you can see the price of that- Voinovich and Martinez are retiring at least in part because there was a very good chance they were going to lose and Burr is extremely vulnerable as well.

Richard Burr and Elizabeth Dole certainly have themselves to blame more than anything else for the difficulty they've had maintaining the level of visibility necessary to earn a smooth reelection, but these numbers do indicate that as the state's population continues to grow it makes it harder for officials to stay connected with their constituents. Certainly a lesson to Kay Hagan to start worrying about that now rather than 2013.