Soccer Dad

6% martin

It must be disconcerting for a politician to look at his numbers and discover that he's even less popular than President Bush. WJZ reports O'Malley Has Lower Approval Rating Than Pres. Bush

A Washington Times Rasmussen poll gives President Bush a 36 percent approval rating. O'Malley got a 33 percent approval rating.

"Martin O'Malley is going to be very popular. He had a great year as governor, very progressive year. He moved forward on education, healthcare and the environment...His approval ratings are going to go nowhere but up," said Senate President Mike Miller.

In the poll, six percent of participants ranked the governor's performance as excellent, 27 percent good, 27 percent fair, 37 percent poor and 4 percent not sure.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski is the voice of reason.

"I think what people are responding to is that their own pocketbook is shrinking and they are frustrated with anyone they think may have shrunk it more," said Barbara Mikulski, U.S. Senate.

That makes sense. The governor and his rubber stamp legislature convened a special session in November to close the state's budget shortfall. In short order they passed a tax increase to close the gap that, among other things, raised the sales tax and arbitrarily extended it to services too.

Worse, the very first order of business was to increase spending on health care for the poor. The budget shortfall was the emergency that necessitated the session, so raising spending as the first order of business was a poor way of demonstrating that the budget crisis was that severe. I can see why Marylanders might think that the governor and legislature were not looking out for their economic interests. (The so-called structural deficit amounted to less than 6% of Maryland's $30 billion budget. I bet enough legislators have enough pet projects that could have been cut, if they'd had the will.)

(Courtesy of Pillage Idiot)

Remarkably the results of this poll don't appear to have made it into the Baltimore Sun, however one of the paper's blogs mentions the poll. Maybe it's because the poll was commissioned by a different newspaper.

It's too early and too close to the special session to read too much into the polls but Gov. Ehrlich consistently polled with over 50% approval ratings.

martin o'malley, maryland.

Posted by SoccerDad at January 9, 2008 6:02 AM