Much more New Mexico voters approve of their U.S. Senators’ job performances than disapprove, but there’s still a large chunk who have no opinion.
That’s the news from the most recent release of data from polling by Morning Consult conducted over the last few months.
The polls show that 53 percent of registered voters approve of Tom Udall’s job performance, while 27 percent disagree and 20 percent have no opinion and that 48 percent approve of Martin Heinrich’s job performance while 30 percent disapprove and 22 percent have no opinion.[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The state’s best environmental coverage.
[/perfectpullquote]Both are Democrats.The poll results for the two New Mexico senators are largely unchanged from those released by Morning Consult in April.
This comes even as most Senators saw their approval ratings drop in that time period.
“More than half of all senators saw negative swings in net approval outside of the surveys’ margins of error in their respective states,” Morning Consult wrote. “By comparison, over 20 senators saw their net approval rating decrease in the first quarter of the year from the 2016 pre-election rankings.”
Udall won reelection to a second term in 2014, while Heinrich faces reelection next year.
When it comes to ranking the approval ratings of senators, Udall’s 53 percent approval rating ranks 43rd out of 100 Senators while Heinrich’s ranks 77th.
But most senators in general have fairly high approval ratings from their voters. Only 12 senators have approval rating of below 45 percent. And only three senators have more voters who disapprove of their job performance than approve (Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, John McCain of Arizona and Jeff Flake of Arizona; all three are Republicans).
On the other end of the spectrum, six senators have approval ratings of over 65 percent. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, leads the way with 75 percent followed by Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; John Hoeven, R-North Dakota; Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont and Susan Collins, R-Maine.
The polls were based on more than 140,000 interviews with registered voters between April 1 and June 18. The margin of error for New Mexico’s results is +/- 4 percent.
These types of 50-state polls that are then broken down into individual states can be useful, though FiveThirtyEight Editor Nate Silver wrote last September about how they are not as reliable as 50 individual state polls.
Morning Consult says they will release approval ratings for governors throughout the country next week.
