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.
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.