Morning Consult provides quarterly approval ratings for every sitting governor and senator, and their Q2 2018 ratings were just released.

The Latest Numbers

For the sixth consecutive quarter, Morning Consult finds that Republicans hold every slot among the ten most popular governors. This fact is partially driven by overrepresentation: Republican governors outnumber Democratic governors 2 to 1. Another contributing factor is the outsize popularity of moderate Republican Governors in blue and purple states: Charlie Baker of Massachusetts (number 1), Larry Hogan of Maryland (number 2), Chris Sununu of New Hampshire (number 4) and Brian Sandoval of Nevada (number 7).

The newest rankings show stablemate Phil Scott of Vermont suffering a tumble in popularity after signing gun control legislation, ousting him from the top ten. But the overall news still isn’t good for Democrats: while they have some popular incumbents, none achieve the sky-high approvals of the most beloved Republicans.

The Senate rankings paint a rosier picture for Team Blue. Democrats and the Independents who caucus with them are slightly overrepresented at the top: they comprise six of the ten most popular Senators vs. 49% of the overall chamber. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) again registers the highest approval rating. But some some relatively low-key Democrats without large national profiles (Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Jack Reed of Rhode Island) also make the list.

I was curious to examine the distribution of approval ratings for Democrats and Republicans in governors’ mansions and the Senate. Above, I’ve plotted the empirical densities of the net approval ratings (percent approving minus percent disapproving) of each party’s governors and Senators over the past six quarters. The median of each density is plotted with a vertical dashed line.

Two important caveats should be noted. First, Morning Consult is perceived by some to have a Republican-leaning House Effect, so the ratings may paint Democrats as somewhat less popular than they truly are.

Second, the politicians featured in these polls have not been static over the past six quarters: Dems picked up one governorship (Phil Murphy in NJ) and one Senate seat (Doug Jones in Alabama), while five governors and two Senators have been replaced by members of their own party. But most of the individuals have remained the same, making comparisons across time fairly reasonable.

Dominant Trends

In both the Senate and Governor populations, approval ratings have tended to fall over time. This is partially the end of the “honeymoon phase” for those elected in 2016, though it could also reflect general displeasure with elected leaders in the Trump era.

An interesting partisan divide exists in how approval ratings are evolving:

Republican governors are typically somewhat more popular with their constituents than Democratic governors, and this gap has stayed consistent throughout the Trump presidency. As of the most recent survey, the median Democratic governor had a net approval of +12.5 points vs. +19 points for the median Republican.

Republican Senators are losing ground faster than Democratic Senators. Both parties’ Senators were about equally popular with their constituents at the start of Trump’s presidency. As of July, however, the median Democratic Senator has a net approval of +16 points vs. +8 points for the median Republican.

A few other points are evident from the data:

People typically like their governors a bit more than they like their Senators.

There is much greater variability in Governor approvals, with higher highs for popular governors and lower lows for despised ones. This makes some intuitive sense: a governor’s policies are likely to have a more immediate impact on constituents’ daily lives. A good one might bring fiscal balance and improvements to services; a bad one might bring earthquakes.

Among governor approvals, the variance among Republicans is about twice as high as among Democrats (evidenced by the flatter red density curve). While the typical Republican governor is more popular than the typical Democratic governor, Dems only have one governor with a net approval below -10%: Daniel Malloy of Connecticut. Republicans have six governors in this category.

Discussion

An odd wrinkle to these results is that Democrats are considerably more “overextended” in the Senate than in governors’ mansions. Dems hold 11 Senate seats in states that were lost by Clinton, and 38 of the 40 Senate seats in states that she won. But the inverse is true of governor’s mansions: Republicans hold governorships in eight of the 20 Clinton states and 25 of the 30 Trump states (Alaska’s governor, Bill Walker, is an independent).

With Democratic governors mostly confined to blue states, we might assume their popularity would be higher. But as Nathaniel Rakich and Dhrumil Mehta point out at FiveThirtyEight: “There is basically no correlation between each governor’s net approval rating in the latest Morning Consult poll and his or her state’s partisan lean.”

So perhaps a better way to understand these data is to think about how connected a politician is to the national political environment. Trump’s approvals have been fairly stable for the past three months, but he remains mired in the low 40s. Republican Senators, who share the national political stage with the president, may be suffering by association. But Republican governors — whose policies and leadership are fundamentally local — can better craft their own narrative.

For Democrats, this poses a few problems. Most obviously: they’re very unlikely to take back the governorships in MA, MD, and NH, because the Republican incumbents are so popular going into reelection campaigns. I also wonder if voters see the fundamental character of Democrats as more amenable to legislating — where compromise and consensus-building are key — than to the executive functions of a governorship.

Perhaps an even simpler explanation applies: voters associate Democratic governors with higher taxes, but they don’t always see the benefits of those taxes in the form of improved services. Republicans offer the promise of lower taxes, which is a popular approach — at least until it leads to fiscal ruin and draconian cuts to popular programs. This could explain why Republican governors see greater variation in approval. And it implies that Democrats have to get better at making the case that expanded government can improve people’s lives.