Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of Public Policy Polling, I give you the state of California:
We’d never done a public poll in California before last week and the thing I found most remarkable was how much voters in the state hate all of their politicians.
Arnold Schwarzenegger of course is the least popular Governor in the country with a 20/64 approval rating. The battle to replace him looks like it will be between someone marginally unpopular (Jerry Brown and his 37/39 favorability ratio) and someone very unpopular (Meg Whitman and her 24/44 favorability ratio.)
In the Senate race right now an unpopular incumbent (Barbara Boxer, 37/46 approval) is still favored for reelection because her likely opponent is just as unpopular (Carly Fiorina, 22/30 favorability and that’s before the Democrats start really spending money on attacking the heck out of her.)
….Dianne Feinstein’s breaking even at 41/41 seems like a monumental level of popularity in comparison to everyone else.
It’s true: we hate everyone. Of course, one thing to keep in mind is that the current political season has been almost 100% brutally negative. I’ve never seen such a tidal wave of negative advertising in my life as I have in the past couple of months. Add in a recession that’s hit California worse than most of the country, a budget crisis that’s become nearly unfathomably disastrous, and a dysfunctional political system that’s almost literally incapable of doing anything, and it’s a miracle that these folks don’t poll even worse.
In any case, I’d just like to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger fully deserves his unpopularity. I’m not sure who the 20% are who still approve of him, but they must be seriously deranged.
