Ideology and Perdue's Decline

Carter Wrenn suggests that Bev Perdue's numbers are declining because she's too liberal.

Here's how Perdue's approval rating has declined over the last four month by ideology:

Month	Approval w/ Liberals	Approval w/ Moderates	Approval w/ Conservatives
February	72	52	25
March	70	54	22
April	63	49	24
May	52	44	19

So she's had a six point drop with conservatives, an eight point drop with moderates, and a 20 point drop with liberals. Somehow I don't think being too liberal is her problem. BTW, President Obama's numbers have stayed in the same 51-54 range every month since he took office.

I think Perdue is doing as good a job as she can, but as I pointed out to News 14 yesterday Governors everywhere are seeing their approval ratings tank right along with the economy. If things get turned around Perdue will be fine and if they don't, she probably won't. That's just the reality of executive leadership in politics these days.

Why the DSCC wants Madigan

A lot of reports this week about stepped up DSCC efforts to get Lisa Madigan to run for the Senate next year in Illinois.

I doubt they're really worried about losing this seat. Our poll a couple weeks ago did show Alexi Giannoulias and Jan Schakowsky having a hard time with Mark Kirk, but that was with many more Democrats undecided than folks of other political stripes. Assuming those Democrats would end up coming home either of those candidates would probably get a victory somewhere around the 55-45 mark. But it would probably take at least some DSCC resources to make it happen, and there's the potential for it to become stressful for Democrats.

If Lisa Madigan was the candidate the stress- and the need for DSCC money- ceases from day one. Mark Kirk probably doesn't even bother to run. Madigan got 24% of the Republican vote against Kirk in our poll- compared to just 8% for Giannoulias and 5% for Schakowksy. If you pull a quarter of the GOP vote in a state that's very Democratic to begin with the game is over. Madigan has a level of crossover appeal that is quite unusual.

And while Kirk has a double digit lead among independents against two of the other potential Democratic contenders, mirroring a trend we are finding in many states, Madigan leads him 44-32 with them.

If Madigan runs national Democrats can pretty much cross Illinois off the list of states to worry about and centralize resources more toward defending seats that truly are vulnerable and picking off ones currently held by Republicans. It's no wonder they want her to jump in.

Perdue in negative territory

For the first time since taking office Bev Perdue's approval rating has dropped into negative territory, with 51% of voters disapproving of her job performance compared to just 34% who give her good marks.

The Governor's declining numbers are largely a function of decreasing support for her work from her party base. In March 66% of Democrats approved of her. That dropped to 61% in April and now down to 50%. She is also struggling a lot with independents. They were almost evenly divided on her two months ago but now 60% disapprove and just 26% approve.

It's a safe bet that Perdue's recent announcement of a pay cut to teachers and state employees has a lot to do with this decline. 53% of voters say they opposed this move with only 36% in support. Both of those groups gave Perdue strong support during her campaign for the office last year but only 29% of teachers and 36% of other state employees now say that they approve of her job performance.

Clearly the bad economy is primarily responsible for Perdue's numbers, but what's interesting is that in some sense Perdue is a victim of her own openness. She could have announced the furloughs two weeks ago in a faceless press release, but instead she had a press conference that put her front and center on the 6 o'clock news as the face of the pay cuts.

She has not hesitated to put herself in the spotlight as the deliverer of bad news- in some sense that is admirable for a politician but for now at least it is having quite a negative impact on her popularity with the public. If things do get turned around she's positioned herself- by taking the hit when things are bad- to take the credit when things are good. But that's certainly a political gamble and it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

Full results here

E. Edwards for Senate?

Our poll yesterday found that 58% of North Carolinians have a favorable opinion of Elizabeth Edwards. That's higher than our most recent findings for Barack Obama (54%), Roy Cooper (41%), Richard Burr (35%), Kay Hagan (33%), and even Andy Griffith (56%).

Those numbers make me inclined to test her as a Senate candidate against Richard Burr next month if Cooper still hasn't jumped into the race. It wouldn't be the first time someone with a serious illness was elected to that body nor would she be the first woman who saw an increase in popularity from a sympathetic public after she decided to keep her family together despite her husband cheating on her.

That said, I doubt that Edwards' popularity would hold up under the scrutiny of a statewide campaign. I think folks would just judge her in a completely different way at that point and it probably wouldn't be nearly as positive.

What do you think about a) the possibility of an E. Edwards candidacy and b) how she would fare?

Swinging Polls

Last year there was a lot of criticism of pollsters and polling companies because so often two different companies polling on the Presidential race nationally or in different states would come to such different conclusions. This was often treated like it was some sort of new development, perhaps caused by the proliferation of companies active in gauging the state of the 2008 race, and that back in the 'good old days' polling was much more consistent.

That's why I was amused to read this week in the memoir of JFK adviser Ted Sorensen that during a one month span in late 1963 Gallup came out with a national poll showing Kennedy leading Barry Goldwater 53-40 while Harris came out with one showing Goldwater leading Kennedy 54-38: a 29 point discrepancy!

Clearly this is not a new development, and indeed there are few times from last year where I remember polls being this divergent. Given how Goldwater ended up faring against LBJ I'm going to have to guess Gallup was right in this instance.

Party Affiliation of Teachers and State Employees

Tomorrow we're going to have our dreary new numbers out on Bev Perdue. One of the things we did on this poll was break down her approval by whether respondents were public school teachers or state employees.

You can see how she did with those groups tomorrow but for today I thought it was interesting to look at the party identification of those folks.

Among teachers we surveyed 56% were Democrats, 36% Republicans, and 8% independents.

For other state employees it was 56% Democrats, 33% Republicans, and 10% independents.

The breakdown we're finding for the state as a whole right now is 49% Democrats and 35% Republicans so they are, as you would expect, more Democratic than the population at large but not perhaps as monolithically left leaning as might have been anticipated.

Divergent Popularities for Edwards Couple

Between John and Elizabeth Edwards they make up the political figures with the highest and least levels of popularity with North Carolina voters of anyone PPP has polled on in the last year.

69% of voters in the state have an unfavorable opinion of Edwards, the worst figure PPP has ever found for a politician not just in North Carolina but anywhere in the country. 19% view him favorably.

But even with the controversy about Elizabeth Edwards' recent book and accusations that she enabled some of her husband's questionable decision making, she is still viewed positively by 58% of North Carolinians, a level higher than Barack Obama or any other politician that we polled on in the state. 22% have a negative opinion of her.

The numbers break down largely on party lines, although even Democrats have had enough of John and Republicans generally like Elizabeth. 30% of Democrats, 16% of independents, and 5% of Republicans hold a favorable opinion of the former Senator. 64% of Democrats, 56% of independents, and 50% of Republicans view his wife positively.

Full results here.

Impact of Edwards dropping out

With the revelation in the last week that Elizabeth Edwards thought her husband should have stopped running for President after she found out about his relationship with Rielle Hunter, some folks have wondered if Hillary Clinton might have been launched to the nomination if she had been in more of a head to head contest with Barack Obama.

I think this line of thought is a bit of a simplification based on identity politics, assuming that Clinton and Edwards were splitting some sort of monolithic white vote and that Clinton would have thus picked up Edwards' voters if he hadn't been in the race. I think the reality is that Edwards' message was closer to Obama than Clinton and that would have superseded or at least equaled movement based primarily on race.

Mark Blumenthal has debunked this theory in a more wide ranging analysis, but I thought the poll we conducted in North Carolina immediately after Edwards' withdrawal gave a pretty clear answer to where his former supporters were going: 41% to Obama and 41% to Clinton. Small changes certainly could have made a small difference in the closely contested early primary contests, but on the whole I think Edwards not running would have pretty much been a wash.

Insider Baseball

It says something about how scared Republicans are of losing Richard Burr's seat that they're putting so much hope into the possibility that a nine year old lawsuit will scuttle a possible Roy Cooper candidacy.

I just don't see this lawsuit becoming a big liability in the campaign. The NRSC or the Burr campaign can run a negative ad about Cooper running negative ads but that looks pretty dumb. I guess they can come right out and call Cooper a liar but that risks voters thinking that they're the ones that crossed the line- especially given that I think Republicans are already perceived as the mean party.

It's not like Cooper insulted someone's religion.

I'm not surprised, given Cooper's very popular record, that this is what the GOP seems to be pinning its hopes on. But I don't see it proving to be very effective.

Where should we poll this week?

The four choices for this week are the Republican primary for New Jersey Governor, the general election for New Jersey Governor, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.

We're offering the two New Jersey races as separate choices because if we poll the primary I only want to interview likely primary voters, rather than interviewing likely general election voters about the primary. Just our methodological preference.

Either way we will begin regular polling of the New Jersey race once the candidates are set early next month.

In Wisconsin we'd see how Paul Ryan would do against Russ Feingold, as well as how Scott Walker and Mark Neumann stack up against Jim Doyle.

In Oklahoma we would test Brad Henry and Dan Boren against Tom Coburn, even though that seems like a long shot, and also against Tom Cole- any other possible GOP contenders if Coburn retires we should look at? And in the Governor's race Jari Askins and Drew Edmonson against Mary Fallin and J.C. Watts. Let me know if we're missing anything. The voting is open until Wednesday at 10 AM.