Anonymous Senate Delegations

We've done approval polling on both members of the Senate delegation in 14 states so far this year, and North Carolina has the least well known group representing it in Washington of those places:

State	Average ‘No Opinion’ about Senators
North Carolina	33
Delaware	29
Colorado	27
New Jersey	25
Ohio	23
Illinois	20
Louisiana	17
Alabama	17
Arkansas	16
Kentucky	14
Oklahoma	13
Wisconsin	13
Virginia	12
West Virginia	10

There are two main reasons for the comparative anonymity of the state's Senators:

1) Other than Jesse Helms, we just don't keep Senators around in North Carolina. He's the only one to be reelected since 1968. So voters just don't have time to become all that familiar with the folks they elect and then defeat six years later. The other two states at the top of this list- Colorado and Delaware- each have a Senator who was appointed rather than popularly elected. And the state with the most well known delegation- West Virginia- has two Senators with a total tenure of more than 75 years. There's not much doubt that longevity matters.

2) The other reason is that whether we think of ourselves as such or not, we are a big state! And Senators in big states tend to have a harder time getting the voters familiar with them because there is so much more ground to cover. It's no coincidence that beyond the two states with appointed Senators the next three states with the least well known delegations are New Jersey, Ohio, and Illinois, all among the 11 most populous states.

Unless Richard Burr and Kay Hagan can break the state's recent trend, get reelected, and stay around a while North Carolina will continue to have one of the most anonymous- and ultimately least powerful- delegations in the US Senate. We sure aren't building much seniority.