As President Joe Biden’s approval rating continues to decline, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has seen the largest gains to his approval rating of any senator.
The centrist Democrat has drawn the ire of progressives for blocking a number of the president’s domestic agenda items, but he’s been handsomely rewarded for it among voters in his home state.
“In surveys conducted Jan. 1-March 31, 57% of West Virginia voters approved of Manchin’s job performance, up from 40% during the first quarter of 2021 — the biggest increase of any senator over that time frame,” Morning Consult reports.
Those gains have largely been due to Republicans and independents.
…69% [of Republicans] now approve of his job performance, doubling his rating from the first quarter of last year, when 35% approved. Most of that improvement has come since the third quarter of 2021 — before he killed the Democrats’ “Build Back Better” domestic policy legislation.
While Manchin has made up ground on the right, he’s angered West Virginia Democrats, 54% of whom now disapprove of him, up from 32% around this time last year. However, he’s also made large gains with independents over that time frame, with an approval rating rising from 31% to 50%. (Morning Consult)
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, another centrist Democrat who has often joined Manchin in blocking the president's progressive agenda items, has not enjoyed the same increases.
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Manchin’s numbers in West Virginia stand in contrast to those of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat who has joined Manchin in blocking key pieces of Biden’s agenda. Despite a similar coalitional shift, her approval rating has dropped to 46% to 44%, while the share who disapprove increased from 35% to 42%, due to souring among Democrats and a lack of bounce among independents. (Morning Consult)
Manchin's rise in approval numbers has pushed him into the top 10 list of America's most popular U.S. senators.
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