A confounding poll
The 25th annual Arkansas Poll is out from the University of Arkansas. It shows that Sarah Sanders is less approved-of than recent governors including her dad. But it also shows that people are as satisfied with the way things are going as they were with her immediate predecessors.
That suggests that Sanders’ 48 percent approval rating (and 39 percent disapproval)—compared to her dad’s approval usually in the high50s to 60s, to Mike Beebe’s frequent 70s, and to Asa Hutchinson’s steady high-50s—is in part a personal thing owing to her unpleasantness.
I once wrote that Arkansas chooses its governors on a personal popularity basis akin to student body presidents. I have not written that—or even thought about it— since Sanders brought snarls and scoffs into the equation.
I also suspect the low approval rating is in part a reflection of Sanders’ design, which is to use Arkansas for a national political profile requiring that she be divisive and polarizing in her policies and rhetoric.
Her dad stayed popular because he had to work with a Democratic Legislature and often did counterintuitive things such as advocate children’s health insurance, immigrant compassion and a sales-tax increase to meet a court order on public schools.
She works with an overwhelmingly Republican Legislature and has managed quickly to irk even it. And she has not once been counterintuitive. It is all national Republican talking points with her.
Beebe stayed in the 70s because he was heavily nonpartisan and wanted only to be governor. She is heavily partisan and clearly wants to be something more.
Hutchinson stayed in the high 50s because he was cautiously pragmatic and counterintuitive on culture issues. She is neither cautious nor pragmatic, but entirely partisan and divisive on culture issues.
Her dad ran for president, with some early success, by saying he was conservative but not mad at anybody.
She is mad at a lot of us. Hutchinson has carried that counterintuitive pragmatism into the presidential race and stayed stuck around zero percent. She would like to do better than that in the national Republican context. Asa attacks Donald Trump. Sarah would not dare.
It could be—one would like to think, anyway—that Sanders’ 48-39 approve-to-disapprove rating has been affected by an odd purchase of an insanely expensive lectern she has never used, as well as her calling a special legislative session to keep personal secrets from the Freedom of Information Act. But that is not specifically quantified in this poll.
But there are signs of her being dragged down by that voucher plan to bleed the public schools in favor of private and church schools. Most parts of Arkansas take pride in the local rural school, and there are few if any private alternatives.
Maybe that explains that the poll over 24 years showed broad support for the state’s public-education performance but, this time, shows it a tad upside-down. Forty-five percent approve of education services while 47 percent are unsatisfied with them.
She would say the finding supports her voucher reform. I hope it reflects the resistance to it.
Through it all, though, she looks fine for re-election because 61 percent of respondents are pleased with the general direction of the state while only 33 percent approve of Joe Biden, whom Sarah will load onto the back of any Democratic gubernatorial candidate, simply for the sin of that “D” by his or her name.
Take note that the odd television ad being run currently in her promotion—to steady her footing amid recent problems—begins by attacking Biden, not extolling Sanders.
It is mildly interesting that, of the 35 percent of poll respondents calling themselves independents, 44 percent say they are closer to Republicans and 34 percent closer to Democrats. But that is narrowed from 2022, when it was 49 closer to Republicans and 23 closer to Democrat. That might be a matter of election-fear dynamics versus offyear ones.
On all the culture issues, Arkansas attitudes remain where they have been over a quarter-century—against abortion (though less so now that it is more widely illegal), against more gun regulation and against any forced lifestyle changes because of climate change.
Except for this little gem of a finding: 83 percent of respondents are happy with library services, up from 71 percent a quarter-century ago, well before Republicans started calling libraries pornographers.
All I could make of that is that there seldom will be a poll of Arkansas politics without contradiction and confoundment. But it may explain why that Democratic consultant told me libraries are a winning issue for Democrats.