Polls

The Star's Dave Helling: "A new poll apparently conducted by opponents of Rex Sinquefield’s petition drive to put an income-for-sales tax swap on the November 2012 Missouri ballot shows declining support for the idea in Springfield, Mo., a conservative stronghold. The poll — by Momentum Analysis — shows Springfield voters oppose the swap by a 43% to 37% margin (that is within the poll’s margin of error.) In September, the pollster says, Springfield voters support[ed] the swap by a 9% margin. That’s a 15-point swing in three months."

Emphasis added. 

More from the latest Public Policy Polling survey:

Roy Blunt is proving to be a pretty unpopular Senator.  Only 33% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 42% who disapprove. Independents split against him 28/44 and only 54% of Republicans are happy with him compared to 63% of Democrats who give him poor marks.  The fact that Blunt won such an overwhelming victory last year even though he's so unpopular is really symbolic of how brutal the climate was for Democrats in 2o1o- the GOP could have put up most anyone and won the Senate race in Missouri last year.  Blunt's someone who could be really vulnerable if he was running in a year that was good for Democrats or even pretty neutral.  But his timing was perfect last year.

As the Star's Dave Helling notes, PPP's work the last cycle "actually exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates," despite their progressive orientation and client list.

CQ/Roll Call's Political Wire: "A new CBS News poll finds Americans 'are unimpressed with their political leaders' handling of the debt ceiling crisis.' Key finding: A majority disapprove of all the involved parties' conduct, but Republicans in Congress fare the worst, with just 21% backing their intransigent resistance to raising taxes. A stunning 71% disapprove."

Who could have guessed that Americans don't like the plan to privatize Medicare supported by Todd Akin, Roy Blunt, Vicky Hartzler, Jo Ann Emerson, Billy Long, Sam Graves and Blaine Luetkemeyer?  

According to the new CBS News poll, 31 percent of Americans support converting Medicare into a sort of voucher program. Fifty-eight percent said they support keeping the program’s existing structure intact.

[The House GOP plan supported by all of the Missouri Republicans in Washington] plan would eliminate the traditional single-payer Medicare system and replace it with vouchers that could be used in the private insurance market.

According to a poll from CNN, people have some serious concerns about the Ryan/Akin plan's effect on Medicare:

The poll indicates that 58 percent of the public opposes the Republican plan on Medicare, with 35 percent saying they support the proposal...

It would be hard to argue that Mike Huckabee's decision not to run for president is good news for Republicans on the ballot in Missouri 2012.   As you can see the most recent PPP Polling survey, conducted April 28 to May 1, Huckabee was the strongest challenger to Barack Obama in the state.   Obama trailed Huckabee and Romney in their poll, and we haven't even begun to see a real discussion of Romney's previous support for a federal health insurance mandate. 

From PPP's blog post on the most recent presidential numbers in the Show-Me State.

Even more data from Public Policy Polling: 

AKIN, STEELMAN BASICALLY TIED

There would be no clear favorite to start out if the principal Republican candidates for Senate in Missouri end up being Todd Akin and Sarah Steelman. Akin polls at 29% right now with Steelman at 28%, Ed Martin at 9%, and John Brunner at 6%. 

Akin is stronger with center and center right Republican voters. With moderates he leads Steelman 26-23 and with voters describing themselves as 'somewhat conservative' he has a 33-25 advantage. The largest segment of the GOP electorate though is those describing themselves as 'very conservative,' and Steelman earns the overall tie by holding a 32-28 advantage with that group...

Also, a whopping 38% of MO Republicans are still birthers, which isn't suprising when you consider the actions of Sen. Roy Blunt, House Majority Floor Leader [Speker] Tim Jones and other GOP leaders to propagate birther nonsense. 

Full results here.

New poll data from Public Policy Polling:

McCaskill steady

Claire McCaskill's endured a lot of bad press over the last two months since PPP last polled Missouri, but at least in the short term it doesn't appear to be affecting her prospects for reelection. McCaskill's approval rating in early March was 46% and now it's still 46%. McCaskll had small leads over a cadre of potential Republican opponents in early March and she still has small leads over all of her potential foes. This continues to look like a toss up race, as it has for months now, but McCaskill's position now is no worse than it was before the issue of her airplane and its related taxes hit the news.

The Washington Post's Greg Sargent summarizes data from a new Gallup poll:

USA Today published a few numbers this morning from the Gallup poll, which is due out tomorrow, but Gallup sent me an early look at the details. There’s this striking finding:

Are you worried or not worried that the Republican plan for reducing the federal budget deficit in the long-term would --

Cut Medicare too much? Worried: 66; Not worried: 31

Cut Social Security too much? Worried: 65; Not worried: 33

Take away needed protections for the poor and disadvantaged: Worried: 64; Not worried: 34

Protect the rich at the expense of everyone else: Worried: 64; Not worried: 35

Here's a more complete breakdown, directly from Gallup:

From the Washington Post's Greg Sargent:

New Washington Post/ABC News polling released this morning is unequivocal: There is strong across the board support for Obama’s policy preferences on the deficit.

Missourians for the Protection of Dogs, the advocacy group supporting the Puppy Mill Prevention Cruelty Act, has a new poll out from Lake Research Partners showing that a majority of registered voters oppose efforts to repeal Proposition B in the General Assembly.  As summarized by KMOX:

The Missouri Humane Society is out with a new public opinion poll that shows 59 percent of respondents do not want Proposition B-the puppy mill law…repealed or weakened by Missouri lawmakers.  

Prop B was approved by voters last November. 

41 percent favor the repeal.  Lake Research Partners designed and conducted the survey of 600 registered voters who had voted in the 2008 presidential election or had registered to vote since.   The telephone poll was conducted March 17th through the 21st.   The margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points. 

The poll also revealed that if lawmakers succeed in either repealing or weaking [sic] the puppy mill law, voters by a nearly two-to-one margin want to see Gov. Jay Nixon veto the bill so that Prop B remains law. 

Full press release below the break.

Today from Public Policy Polling:

Sarah Steelman is the early top choice of Missouri Republicans to be their candidate for the Senate next year, although with most of the candidates including herself largely unknown at this point there is plenty of time for that to change.

31% of GOP primary voters say they'd like Steelman to be their nominee to 24% for Todd Akin, 9% for Ed Martin, and just 2% for Ann Wagner. If you take Akin out of the mix Steelman's support expands to 37% compared with 18% for Martin and 11% for Wagner.

We're not seeing any big ideological fissures yet in these numbers. Steelman leads Akin by 14 points with moderates but she also has a 13 point advantage with those voters describing themselves as 'very conservative.' Her lead is narrower with 'somewhat conservative' voters who give her only a one point edge on Akin. It's a similar story when Akin's out- then Steelman's up 26 points on Martin with the 'very conservative' wing and 24 points with the moderates, but only 9 points with folks who call themselves 'somewhat conservative.' For whatever reason she's doing better with moderates and the far right than the center right.

It's too early to make a whole lot of these numbers though given that 56% of voters don't know enough about Steelman to have formed an opinion and that just rises to 61% for Akin, 75% for Martin, and 81% for Wagner.

Even more poll data from Public Policy Polling:

Nixon has well above average approval numbers for a Governor in our polling, with 47% of voters happy with the job he's doing to 31% who express disapproval of him. Nixon's numbers have an unusual pattern by party. Only 60% of Democrats like what he's doing while 24% disapprove. That's a tepid level of support from within his own party. But he has almost as many Republicans- 32%- who approve of his performance as there are- 40%- who are unhappy. It's rare to see any politician come that close to breaking even across party lines. And he has very solid numbers with independents as well at a 48/26 spread...

Kinder is mostly unknown to voters across the state right now. 51% say they don't know enough about him to have an opinion and those who do split nearly right down the middle with 25% rating him favorably and 24% unfavorably. Although Kinder's being the Republican nominee next year is treated almost as inevitable, he has only a 38% positive rating with GOP voters so if someone wanted to challenge him and had the ability to run a strong campaign it's unlikely that a primary contest would be a shoo in for Kinder.

Full data here.  Topline memo embedded below the jump.

More interesting data from PPP:

The Presidential race in Missouri could go three different ways next year based on our current polling, depending on who the Republican nominee is.

If it's Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich the state will be a tossup much as it was in 2008. Barack Obama ties Gingrich in the state at 44% and trails Mitt Romney by just a single point at 44-43.If it's Mike Huckabee, Republicans should win the state by a much more comfortable margin than John McCain's narrow victory the last time around. He leads Obama 49-43.

And if it's Sarah Palin, Democrats should finally be able to return this state to their column. Obama leads her 48-43...

The reason Obama's still competitive in Missouri despite his own unpopularity is the weakness of the Republican candidate field against him. Only Huckabee has net positive favorability numbers, with 45% rating him favorably to 35% with an unfavorable opinion. Voters are quite negative toward Gingrich (31/50) and even Romney (32/44), allowing Obama to stay competitive with them despite his own poor numbers. And of course Palin's figures are the worst with 56% of voters expressing a negative opinion of her to only 37% with a positive one.

More data from Public Policy Polling today, this time about new Senator Roy Blunt (R-K Street).

Roy Blunt's approval numbers are already under water just a couple months into his first term in the Senate. 37% of voters like the job he's doing to 41% who disapprove. This really isn't particularly surprising because Blunt never had good favorability numbers at any point over the course of his campaign the last couple years.

Blunt should probably send Barack Obama a gift basket. Missourians never did and still don't care for Blunt but they sure as heck weren't going to send another vote for the President over to Washington so folks voted for Blunt anyway despite their lack of personal affection for him.

Blunt's under water because Democrats (73%) are more unified in their dislike of him than Republicans (66%) are in their approval. Independents split slightly against him as well by a 35/37 margin. Blunt seems like someone who would be in a lot of trouble in a neutral or Democratic leaning election cycle but his timing was certainly right last year.

Public Policy Polling today released details from a statewide survey they conducted March 3-6 showing the Sen. Claire McCaskill leads all Republican challengers. 

McCaskill has a small advantage against all 4 Republicans we tested against her. She's up 45-44 on Congressman Todd Akin, 45-42 against former Treasurer Sarah Steelman, 46-40 against failed Congressional candidate Ed Martin, and 45-36 against former Ambassador Ann Wagner.

Less noteworthy than the difference between McCaskill's single point lead against Akin and her nine point advantage against Wagner is that McCaskill's support shows no variation from 45-46% across the four match ups. The Republicans get varying levels of support pretty much directly in line with their name recognition- 44% know Akin, 44% know Steelman, 34% know Martin, and only 26% know Wagner. The GOP field is largely anonymous at this point.

Full results here.  Margin of error is +/-4.0%.

Someone needs to tweet harder:

A leading GOP pollster employed by the Missouri Republican Party found Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon's job approval rating to be at 61 percent to start the year.

The survey, which was conducted on behalf of an issues-advocacy group and obtained by POLITICO, demonstrates Nixon's formidable political position more than 20 months before he asks Show-Me State voters for a second term.

The fact that the polling was conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, which counts the Missouri GOP as one of its clients, makes the data considerably more difficult for Republicans to disparage.

It also found that Nixon's 61 percent job approval is up 17 points since February 2009.  Just 26 percent of the 600 registered voters polled disapproved of Nixon's tenure.  Of the 61 percent approving, 13 percent strongly approved of the governor...

Nixon was the only politician tested in the survey, which predominantly focused on a narrow issue in Missouri.  The poll included 31 percent Republicans, 29 percent Democrats and 36 percent independents and was taken between Jan. 23-25.

The Star's Steve Kraske reports that a "new poll out from respected GOP pollster Neil Newhouse shows that MO voters back red-light cameras by — get this — a 71-28 percent margin. And... Newhouse says that support for the cameras is 'both deep and broad' cutting across gender, partisan and educational lines."

Via CQ's Political Wire: "A new USA Today/Gallup poll finds the public strongly opposes laws taking away the collective bargaining power of public employee unions as a way to ease state financial troubles: 61% would oppose a law in their state similar to one being considered in Wisconsin, compared with 33% who would favor such a law."

Via the Washington Post, here's what Americans told Gallup they want to see out of Congress this year: "Of eight actions Congress could take this year, Americans most favor an energy bill that provides incentives for using alternative energy (83%), an overhaul of the federal tax code (76%), and speeding up withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan (72%)."