McConnell's Approval Rating in Kentucky Is Pretty Awful

Leah Barkoukis | August 21, 2017 1:34 PM

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s approval numbers in his home state of Kentucky are not looking good.

According to a new Public Policy Polling survey, only 18 percent of residents approve of the job he’s doing, while 74 percent disapprove.

While McConnell won’t face re-election until 2020, if he were hypothetically on the ballot today, 37 percent of respondents said they’d vote for him, compared to 44 percent who said they would vote for a Democratic opponent instead. Nineteen percent were undecided.

McConnell, who was unable to get enough Senate votes to ensure passage of an Obamacare repeal bill, has recently vented his frustrations with the president over his “excessive expectations” for the GOP agenda.

“Now our new president has of course not been in this line of work before. And I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process,” McConnell said.

“And so, part of the reason I think people feel like we’re underperforming is because too many artificial deadlines unrelated to the reality and the complexity of legislature may not have been fully understood.”

The poll did find, however, that nearly half of respondents—49 percent—disapproved of the healthcare legislation anyway. Twenty-seven percent said they approved of it.

Nevertheless, Trump has been critical of McConnell for failing to repeal and replace Obamacare, and even told him to “get back to work” on advancing the Republican agenda, including on healthcare, tax reform, and infrastructure.