West Virginians Sour on Joe Manchin After He Delivers a Big Win for Democrats

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin’s job approval rating has fallen by double digits among West Virginia voters in recent months as he has played a pivotal role in advancing a pared-back version of President Joe Biden’s major domestic policy legislation, Morning Consult Political Intelligence tracking shows. This places him comfortably among America’s most unpopular senators ahead of a potential 2024 re-election run.

Contextualizing Manchin’s job approval rating

The latest surveys, taken from daily tracking data and analyzed quarterly to make comparisons across states with large and small populations, show many West Virginians are reverting to the views they held of their senior senator before he spent the bulk of Biden’s early White House tenure tapping the brakes on a progressive agenda.

Following a quarter in which he played a pivotal role in the enactment of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act — a massive climate, health care and taxes measure — Manchin saw a greater decline in his approval rating and a larger surge in disapproval than any other Senate incumbent. That has dragged him to similar levels of home-state support held by controversial senators such as Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Republicans Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, all of whom are among America’s most unpopular senators.

For Morning Consult’s state-level survey data, weights are applied to each state separately based on age, gender, education, race, home ownership, marital status, presidential voting history and — for a subset of states — race by education as well as an age-by-gender interaction.

Margins of error for responses from all voters in each state range from 1 to 5 points. For more detailed information, you can download the 50-state data set for senatorial approval ratings among all voters here.

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