A new list of rankings from a high-profile polling organization is giving a big red thumbs down to Gov. Matt Bevin.
Kentucky’s governor is the least popular in the nation among voters in their own state, according to Morning Consult’s Q2 rankings, with a 56% disapproval rating to just 32% who approve.
Bevin notably has ground to make up among voters in his own party, with an election looming in November. The governor faces a 40% disapproval rating among fellow Republicans in Kentucky, a number that comes after a May primary election where GOP challenger Robert Goforth, a state representative, scored 39% of the in-party vote to Bevin’s 52%.
His net approval among Kentucky voters, according to the Morning Consult poll, sits at -24 overall, which breaks down to +11 among Republicans, -63 among Democrats and -26 among Independents.
The rankings do not measure how Democratic gubernatorial challenger Andy Beshear is rated, or how he stacks up against Bevin among voters in the commonwealth. Beshear and Bevin are engaged in a bitter campaign, after years of conflict during Beshear’s time as Kentucky’s attorney general.
Bevin’s campaign did not respond to a Courier Journal request for comment. But the governor has made it clear over the years that he’s not concerned about how he’s rated in polls — he’s never scored highly, he’s said, and still won the gubernatorial election in 2015.
“Have any of you ever seen a poll ever done — ever — in which I was more popular than unpopular? Any of you, ever? There has never been one,” Bevin told reporters in April, after a similar poll was released. “And I won 106 out of 120 counties (in 2015) while being the most unpopular candidate in the history of America, apparently. And so my point is this — it’s irrelevant.”