Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) popularity is collapsing — and fast.
According to Newsweek, the latest Gallup poll shows McConnell bleeding support, even among Republican voters.
Breaking down the numbers
Notably, the poll was taken from Jan. 4–15, a period that saw everything from a pair of wins for Democrat Senate candidates in Georgia that granted Dems control of both houses of Congress to a riot on Capitol Hill that delayed the certification of the 2020 Electoral College votes.
As for McConnell, it seems voters aren’t impressed by his handling of it all. According to Newsweek, of more than 1,000 respondents, 64% told Gallup that they had an unfavorable view of the new minority leader.
Just 22% said they approved of McConnell’s job performance, according to Gallup‘s polling.
It only gets worse
Meanwhile, a similar poll from YouGov pegged McConnell at his lowest favorability rating since November 2017, Newsweek noted.
Among those in the GOP, the numbers only get worse for McConnell: just 42% — less than half — of Republicans surveyed by Gallup expressed support for the senator, Newsweek reported. It’s a sharp drop from this time last year; in a February 2020 poll, McConnell had the support of nearly 7 in 10 Republicans, according to Newsweek.
In the same time frame, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has seen an uptick in popularity, with 44% expressing support for her in the latest Gallup poll, compared to 39% who said the same last February, the pollster noted.
Looking to the future
It all begs the question: what is exactly is going on here? While there’s no easy answer, it’s not hard to speculate.
McConnell first started taking flak from his own caucus late last year, when he was one of the first Republicans to publicly accept then-President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 White House race. After the Electoral College named Joe Biden the winner of that election in mid-December, McConnell started referring to the Democrat as the “president-elect,” and he encouraged Senate Republicans not to object to the reported results, Politico noted.
Add to that McConnell’s reported openness to voting to convict Trump in the upcoming Senate impeachment trial, and the minority leader has found himself in a tough spot, especially as a full half of Republican voters maintain that the former president should play a “major role” in the GOP going forward, according to a Morning Consult poll shared by Forbes this week.
Luckily for McConnell, he has the next six years to try to win Republicans over before he’s up for re-election. Only time will tell, however, if he succeeds in that effort.
The post Mitch McConnell collapses in the polls as Dems take control of Congress first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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