Last week, President Trump responded to governors’ positive coronavirus poll numbers by citing his own federal government’s help.
Remember this, every Governor who has sky high approval on their handling of the Coronavirus, and I am happy for them all, could in no way have gotten those numbers, or had that success, without me and the Federal Governments help. From Ventilators to Testing, we made it happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2020
Americans, though, don’t seem to be crediting Trump nearly as much as he would like.
New polling data from SurveyMonkey, which were shared with The Washington Post, show that fully 49 of 50 governors have significantly higher approval ratings for their coronavirus responses than Trump does in recent polls. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll last week showed 43 percent of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of the outbreak. The SurveyMonkey data show Trump at a slightly higher 47 percent.
The one governor on Trump’s level is Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R), whose efforts to reopen his state have proved controversial. In the Post-Ipsos poll, Kemp’s approval rating was 39 percent; in the new one, it’s a similar 43 percent — the same as Trump’s.
Apart from Kemp, the governor closest to Trump is Hawaii Gov. David Ige (D), at 54 percent. No other governor falls below half of their constituents supporting their response.
Here’s the full list:
The data show Democratic governors with an average coronavirus approval rating of 69 percent, while Republican governors are at 67 percent.
But interestingly, most of the highest and lowest approval ratings belong to Republicans.
Among the highest are a trio of moderate Republicans who have distanced themselves from Trump — Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) at 85 percent, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) at 82 percent, and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) at 82 percent. They occupy three of the top five slots, and six of the top seven are Republicans.
Hogan has clashed with Trump over the availability of testing and has criticized some of the president’s comments. Baker’s restrictive measures on businesses have drawn rebukes from his own state party chairman, who appears to side with Trump’s push to reopen the economy. The trio also supported the impeachment inquiry into Trump last year.
Interestingly, all three have significantly more support from Democratic-leaning voters than Republicans, with at least 9 in 10 giving each governor a thumbs-up. Scott is at a particularly remarkable 97 percent support among these Democratic-leaning voters. Among Republican-leaning voters, he’s at 66 percent, while Hogan is at 77 percent and Baker is at 69 percent.
The same reversal is true of the other Republican governors ranking in the top seven, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) is at 82 percent overall, including 86 percent among Democratic-leaning voters and 70 percent among Republican-leaning ones. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) is at 80 percent overall, including 92 percent among Democratic leaners and 74 percent among Republican leaners.
On the other end of the scale, though, are many of their fellow GOPers. Of the 11 governors with the lowest approval ratings on coronavirus, nine are Republicans.
Along with Kemp, they including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) at 58 percent. Both governors, like Kemp, have pushed forward with among the most aggressive reopening plans.
Also among the 11 at the lowest end are four Republican governors of Midwestern states — Iowa’s Kim Reynolds, South Dakota’s Kristi L. Noem, Missouri’s Mike Parson and Nebraska’s Pete Ricketts — all at 58 percent. All four were among the latest holdouts on issuing statewide stay-at-home orders or were among the few to never issue them at all.
The only other Democrat to rank among the lowest 11 besides Ige is Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D), at 60 percent.
The numbers reinforce the rallying effect the coronavirus outbreak has created among the American people -- at least when it comes to their governors. They also suggest a more steady, competent response from the federal government might have carried significant upside for Trump; instead, he’s stuck at where he almost always has been in polling of his performance: the low-to-mid 40s.
This SurveyMonkey poll was based on interviews with 123,335 adults nationwide April 30-May 13, including state-level sample sizes that ranged from 210 interviews in North Dakota to 17,471 interviews in California, with at least 400 interviews in 42 states. The poll was conducted among a sample of the millions of people who take unrelated user-generated surveys on SurveyMonkey’s platform (read more about their methodology here). Because this is a non-probability sampling method, no margin of sampling error is reported.
The national sample was first weighted to match U.S. population estimates in zip codes with various characteristics, including age, population density and race/ethnicity. After this, each state sample was weighted to match the gender, age, race and educational makeup of the adult population according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
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