Senator Joe Manchin’s roller coaster poll numbers have taken another dip. Morning Consult reports this week that the West Virginia Democrat is now underwater, with a disapproval rating of 51 percent and an approval rating of just 42 percent.
Manchin’s brief popularity among a majority of Republican voters has dissipated. His approval rating with the West Virginia GOP has dropped from a high of 69 percent earlier this year to just 44 percent.
His approval rating among Independents has dropped from 50 percent in the first quarter of this year to 31 percent.
Meanwhile, Manchin has regained favor with some Democratic voters. Only 44 percent approved of his job performance a few months ago, but that number is back up to 52 percent.
What happened?
Chris Stirewalt, author and politics editor of NewsNation, explained it this way: Manchin’s popularity among Republicans in the first quarter was a “sugar high.” It was a momentary Republican surge of approval for Manchin for his willingness to kill President Biden’s Build Back Better plan.
I saw that reflected in many texts I received from Talkline listeners who identified themselves as Manchin critics, but they were willing to give him credit for opposing the Democrats. As long as Manchin stood in opposition to Biden, they were okay with him.
However, that didn’t last.
In July, Manchin announced he had reached an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans viewed the plan as a scaled down version of Build Back Better and they opposed it.
In West Virginia, Republicans and conservative independents who had given Manchin the approval boost, recoiled and moved back to the “disapprove” category. They were fine with Manchin while he was obstructing the Democrats agenda, but the moment he was seen as helping his fellow Democrats, the party was over.
By the same token West Virginia Democrats who were frustrated with Manchin for blocking Build Back Better, started migrating back to his camp after the Inflation Reduction Act.
That Republican “sugar high” was never going to last, and it would not have translated into a surge of Republican votes if Manchin runs for re-election 2024. This is a deep red state and Republicans will likely get behind the party’s nominee. Remember, Manchin beat Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey by just three points in 2018.
These latest Morning Consult numbers are a regression to the mean for Manchin. He consistently tries to thread the needle of the middle, surviving as a conservative Democrat in Washington and a last-man-standing Democrat in his home state.
That narrow middle is Manchin’s safe space, or at least as safe as anyone in Manchin’s position can be.