Craig Gilbert

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

MILWAUKEE — Like other House speakers before him, Paul Ryan is seeing his national image sag while he presides over an unpopular Congress struggling to get things done.

As the House returns this week from recess with a difficult to-do list, the Wisconsin Republican is suffering the worst polling numbers of his career.

His favorability ratings have gone from positive to negative for the first time in Gallup’s polling.

In a poll by Pew, his approval rating is 29%, his disapproval 54%.

In a survey by Quinnipiac, 28% of voters view him favorably, 52% unfavorably.

These national polls were all taken in the aftermath of the House GOP’s highly publicized failure to pass a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Here are 5 reasons Trump and Congress are struggling with tax reform

Trump says he will unveil tax reform plan next week

But they also reflect broader forces at work in Donald Trump's presidency.

The speaker is now a less popular figure among GOP voters than Trump is. But as a partner of Trump in Republican-run Washington, Ryan has seen his standing suffer among Democrats and independents.

“He’s becoming a more traditional partisan figure, and in today’s polarized environment, it’s hard to maintain high positives that way,” said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup poll.

It’s clear from the polling that views of Ryan have become more polarized along party lines nationally, just as they have in his home state of Wisconsin.

Ryan is tied much more closely to President Trump than he was to candidate Trump last year, when the two clashed during the campaign. And with Republicans holding unified power, he is now a more prominent symbol of the governing party.

“He has gained visibility, and that visibility has increased his negative image among Democrats,” Newport said.

Polls by Gallup and Quinnipiac suggest that most of Ryan’s erosion has occurred outside his own party, among independents and Democrats, who before this year had given Ryan better marks than they did other big-name Republicans.

In the latest Gallup survey, the speaker’s favorability among Democrats plunged from 39% last November to 14% this month.

In a Quinnipiac poll taken March 30 to April 3, 76% of Democratic voters viewed Ryan unfavorably, up from 42% at the outset of his speakership in the fall of 2015. Over that same span, Ryan's standing with independents has shifted from positive to negative.

In his home state of Wisconsin, Ryan's standing actually improved this year with Republicans while declining with liberals, Democrats, independents and moderates, based on a March poll by the Marquette University Law School.

It’s not entirely clear how much the saga of the health care bill has fueled Ryan’s rising negatives nationally. The bill itself was unpopular, and the party's failure to come together was an embarrassment to the speaker. Ryan's numbers were declining before the legislation failed — and have continued to worsen since.

“He’s the symbol of Congress,” said Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac Poll. “Almost every time pollsters ask voters whether they have a favorable opinion of the president or Congress, Congress is a good deal worse than the president.”

Congress has an average job approval nationally of less than 20%.

The recent polling points to a myriad of political challenges for Ryan. His leadership of a GOP-controlled House has helped drive his numbers down among Democrats. Congressional inaction and division have arguably hurt his numbers among independents.

And going forward, a failure to pass conservative bills on taxes and health care would undoubtedly damage his standing among Republican voters, which has already dipped a bit in some polls.

Ryan is now less popular among voters overall than Trump, a reversal of the pattern of most of last year. And his national numbers are roughly as poor as those of other congressional leaders, including House Democratic Leader and former speaker Nancy Pelosi. That’s another change from 2016.

In an interview with the Journal Sentinel on April 5, Ryan said he was “unconcerned about popularity and polling.”

Said Ryan: “Leaders change polls, leaders don’t follow polls. And we need to act like leaders, because we are leading now.”

Ryan’s decline matches one very familiar pattern. Modern House speakers often begin with positive ratings, but they rarely sustain them.

Democrat Pelosi and Republicans John Boehner and Newt Gingrich each skidded into negative territory within their first year and largely remained there.

A review of several years of polling by Gallup and Quinnipiac suggests that Ryan is yet to match the lowest lows that those three reached during their speakerships.

But for the moment he is headed in the same direction.