Poll: Heitkamp Approval Goes Underwater Among North Dakotans, 50 Percent Say Elect Someone Else
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp is cheered on by delegates at her nomination for the United States Senate Saturday at the ND Democratic convention. photo by Eric Hylden/Grand Forks Herald
Morning Consult has released their monthly tracking polling of key states in the midterm elections, and much like last month it’s ugly news for incumbent Senator Heidi Heitkamp.
You can read the full polling report here (PDF), but here’s the key data for Heitkamp showing she’s at a -1 net approval rating (44 percent approve, 45 percent disapprove) while 50 percent of respondents said it was time to elect someone else:
That’s not much change from last month’s Morning Consult poll which showed at 44 percent approval and 42 percent disapproval, but it does continue a negative trend for the Senator in this polling going all the way back to July of last year when she had a 60 percent approval rating:
The generic polling for the state is also ugly for Democrats with 41 percent generally preferring a Republican candidate (+3 from last month) and just 28 percent preferring the Democrat (that’s -2 from last month).
Those generic polling numbers would seem to indicate that Democratic U.S. House candidate Mac Schneider, not to mention every other Democrat on the statewide ballot this election cycle, is going to have a tough time of it.
Specifically, these numbers are pretty awful for Heitkamp, and they seem to have at least some degree of substantiation in independent polling. For instance, last month we got credible reports of internal polling from Republicans showing Heitkamp’s opponent Congressman Kevin Cramer up six points in the competition.
The Cramer campaign hasn’t released that polling – makes sense, they don’t want their pool of activists and voters and fundraisers to get complacent – but it’s apparently real and would seem to jibe with what Morning Consult is showing.
Which is an incumbent that is, at least at this point in the race, losing.
Click here to see the methodology behind this polling. It’s worth noting that Morning Consult has a fairly solid B- rating from FiveThirtyEight.com and a slight Democratic bias.
