Disapproval of U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) has jumped since he and President Trump began feuding publicly, a new Middle Tennessee State University poll shows.
Corker’s disapproval rate has risen to 41 percent among Tennessee voters, a 14-point hike since a similar poll this past spring.
Disapproval of Trump has also gone up some, from 32 to 40 percent, but his 50 percent approval rate has held steady and remains well above the national approval rate of around 37 percent. Approval for Corker, meanwhile, dropped from 52 percent to 45 percent. The poll has a 4-percentage-point error margin.
“Essentially, Corker’s negatives have increased markedly, but he has ended up only a bit behind Trump in terms of approval, and possibly on par with him,” Ken Blake, director of the MTSU Poll, said in a news release last week. “Meanwhile, some undecideds have switched to disapproval of President Trump, but Trump’s base is sticking with him and keeping his approval rate relatively high in the state overall.”
The poll also found that approval of Congress is abysmally low. Approval is at 13 percent, down from 21 percent in the spring.
In addition, the poll found:
56 percent approve of Republican Gov. Bill Haslam, compared to 57 percent in the spring
48 percent approve of the Tennessee General Assembly, compared to 50 percent in the spring
45 percent approve of U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), unchanged from the spring
MTSU means well, no doubt, but their polling showed serious flaws in the past Presidential election. To quote one of their staff on a poll conducted in early October, just 4 weeks before the election: “When likely voters were asked to choose only between Clinton and Trump, the outcome was nearly identical to results of the four-way contest, with 50 percent saying they would vote for Trump, and 40 percent saying they would vote for Clinton. Barely half of Tennessee’s likely voters support Mr. Trump,” said Dr. XXXXX, director of the poll at Middle Tennessee State University…..”
The actual results were that 60.7% of the votes went to Trump, (HRC got 34.7%) in spite of the fact that the voters had a choice of over 5 candidates to pick from, not just Clinton and Trump as the staff person at MTSU stated above. The MTSU poll was wrong. Seriously wrong.
I submit that what the polls do show is that Trump supporters may be shy, or don’t trust pollsters, and/or do not like answering their phones if they do not recognize the incoming phone number. Admitting that fact, though, would put a serious crunch to the revenue stream of most polling organizations. Perhaps MTSU could study why their predicted results to actual results were so far off. And then how to gauge folks attitudes without resorting to using the telephone which clearly does not work any longer.
RECALL THESE IDIOTS NOW!