4 charts explain post-shutdown public opinion
Nancy Pelosi approval rises but so does her disapproval
Public opinion of Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears on the rise heading into next week’s State of the Union address.
Since the midterms and throughout the longest government shutdown in history, Pelosi’s approval rating jumped 17 points to 34 percent, according to a poll released Monday from Monmouth University. The jump in her overall approval is thanks mostly to support from Democrats. Among those respondents, the survey found a huge leap from 16 to 68 percent between January and November 2018.
Pelosi’s disapproval rating also increased over that same period from rising 7 points from 38 to 45 percent.
In contrast, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s approval rating saw no change since the midterms, while the percentage of poll respondents who disapproved of his leadership jumped 12 points to 40 percent.
The survey found half of Americans blame President Donald Trump for the shutdown, but that didn’t move his overall approval rating much. It dropped only 2 points to 41 percent in the January poll.
The approval rating for Congress came in more than 20 percent below the president’s. It dropped 5 points from November to 18 percent — just two points above the bottoming 16 percent approval survey respondents levied on Congress a year ago.
The president’s annual address to Congress is finally scheduled for Tuesday after a long back-and-forth between Trump and Pelosi, but less than half of the public rates the state of the union as at least “somewhat strong.” That result dropped seven points from 55 percent in January 2018.