Poll Numbers For Pat Toomey To Worry About (Do Your Job, Senator)

I realize poll numbers are a snap shot of the opinion of the electorate.  They can and do shift all the time and the only question is how much and how quickly and in which direction.

That being said, here's something that Senator Pat Toomey might want to worry about.  From JD Prose at the Beaver County Times:

As Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey’s approval rating hovers under 30 percent, his refusal to vote on a Supreme Court nominee could hurt him even more in the general election, according to a new poll released Monday.

Only 29 percent of those surveyed by the North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, approved of the job Toomey is doing, compared to 40 percent who disapproved and 31 percent who were not sure.

Here's Public Policy Polling's press release and the full results.  They polled Pennsylvania and Ohio, by the way.

Some of the findings from the data:

• Only 29% of voters approve of the job Toomey is doing to 40% who disapprove, and just 30% approve of the job Portman is doing to 39% who disapprove. They’re both very much in the danger zone for reelection based on those low approval numbers. One thing complicating their path to reelection is how bad the overall brand of Senate Republicans is. Mitch McConnell has a 13/56 approval rating in Pennsylvania, and a 14/57 one in Ohio. His extreme unpopularity is going to be a weight on his party’s incumbents running across the country.


• Strong majorities of voters- 58/35 in Ohio and 57/40 in Pennsylvania- think that the vacant seat on the Supreme Court should be filled this year. What’s particularly noteworthy about those numbers- and concerning for Portman and Toomey- is how emphatic the support for approving a replacement is among independent voters. In Ohio they think a new Justice should be named this year 70/24 and in Pennsylvania it’s 60/37. Those independent voters are going to make the difference in these tight Senate races, and they have no tolerance for obstructionism on the vacancy.

That requires some further data.  From Q4 of the poll results, we see that to the question:

Do you think the Senate should wait to see who is nominated to the Supreme Court before deciding whether to confirm that person, or should it refuse to confirm a nominee to fill the seat no matter who it is

A full 76 percent of those polled answered:

The Senate should wait to see who is nominated to the Supreme Court before deciding whether to confirm that person.

76 percent is beyond a majority, Senator.  It means that somewhere around three quarters of your constituents fully disagree with you when you said:

Given that we are already well into the presidential election process and that the Supreme Court appointment is for a lifetime, it makes sense to give the American people a more direct say in this critical decision.

Kinda hard to skew 76 percent - no matter who made the poll.  And PPP is one of the good ones.

So yea, Senator Toomey.  You should be worried.  Your unconstitutional (and dare is say it unpopular) stance on the upcoming Supreme Court nominee is going to damage your re-election chances.