Weren't we just discussing Mary Landrieu? Oh, right. We were highlighting her impotence in fighting for the Keystone pipeline -- a project she ostensibly supports, but is being shut down at every turn by the Senate Majority Leader she supports and the President with whom she votes 97 percent of the time. A brand new poll out of Louisiana shows that likely voters aren't impressed with their senior Senator:
Wow. SMOR Poll in Louisiana has Landrieu drawing only 36% of the first-round vote http://t.co/fPPVN3GMvQ them's circling-the-drain numbers.
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) May 8, 2014
The Pelican State runs nonpartisan "jungle primaries," in which the top two overall vote-getters advance to a run-off. According to this annual Southern Media and Opinion Research poll, Landrieu is attracting just 36 percent of the vote, with three Republican challengers splitting 46 percent of the vote -- a ten-point disadvantage for the incumbent. Chief among them is Rep. Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor and Congressman who's pulling in 35 percent. Despite having dropped millions on ads promoting herself, Landrieu's job approval rating is tanking, with Barack Obama's unpopularity taking a dramatic toll on her numbers:
Senator Landrieu’s job performance rating continues to deteriorate. Her positive ratings have dropped to an all-time low of 39% in this current poll. Her negative ratings have increased by 30 percentage points in a little over a year and a half (from 28% in September 2012 to 58% in this current poll). In the September 2012 poll, there was a 24 percentage point gap between Landrieu’s negative ratings and those for the President. At present, Senator Landrieu’s negative ratings (58%) are only 6 points behind those of President Obama (64%). While the intensity of likely Louisiana voters giving Senator Landrieu a rating of “excellent” has varied little since September 2012 (12% in 2012 and 15% in the current poll), the intensity of those voters rating her job performance as “poor” has tripled (from 13% in 2012 to 39% in the current poll).
In 2009, Landrieu told skeptical Louisianans that she would accept "100 percent" responsibility for the success or failure of Obamacare, for which she cast the deciding vote:
Landrieu's first TV ad of this cycle attempted to distance her from the law, which seems...rather different than accepting full responsibility. She must be terrified of numbers like these:
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) remains very unpopular in Louisiana and Senator Landrieu’s steadfast support for it poses a huge hurdle to her reelection effort. Only 31% of the voters responded they were “for” the Affordable Care Act which is also referred to as Obamacare while 63% responded they were “against” it...Among voters who responded they were undecided in the U.S. Senate race, 79% said they were against the Affordable Care Act; 11% said they were for it.
Within the Senate horse race subsection of this poll, 17 percent of likely voters described themselves as "undecided" (again, with 36 percent for Landrieu, and 46 percent for the triumvirate of Republicans). That swing-able cohort opposes Obamacare by a 68-point margin. Landrieu needs most of those folks to break for her. How likely is that to happen?