When people were talking about who Kamala Harris might choose as her running mate, Josh Shapiro's high approval rating was often mentioned. I hadn't heard anything about how Tim Walz stood in that respect, so I looked and found that Morning Consult tracks the approval rating for all governors. As of July 24, Shapiro's net rating (favorable minus unfavorable) was +25, which is good but not exceptional (tied for 16th). Walz was +13, which is below average but not exceptional either (tied for 36th). There was no obvious pattern in the ratings, although there may be some tendency for governors in smaller states to have higher approval ratings:
The thing that I found most striking was simply that they were almost all positive--only two were "underwater" and those were at -1. In contrast, Joe Biden has been underwater for most of his time in office, Donald Trump was for almost all of his, Barack Obama for about a third of his, and George W. Bush for about his last three years in office. That led me to wonder if there was a general tendency for governors to get higher approval ratings than Presidents--often people feel more positive about things that are closer to them.
There have been several questions about approval of the governor of your state, ranging from 1954 to 2023.* The figure shows net approval ratings for governors, and presidential approval at the same times.
Gubernatorial approval ratings have not been consistently higher than presidential--they were lower in six of the first seven times, and have been higher in the last three. With only ten cases, it's hard to be confident about anything, but they suggest that the 21st century discontent is specifically about national politics, not about politics in general.
*The Morning Consult data go back to 2017, but require a subscription which is beyond what my research budget can afford.
See this discussion: Minor-league Stats Predict Major-league Performance, Sarah Palin, and Some Differences Between Baseball and Politics.
ReplyDeleteThere might also be a parallel with managing/coaching. There are cases where someone is very successful at the minor league/college level, but flops when he moves up. And it seems to be a particular type--qualities that help at one level aren't as beneficial (and maybe even harmful) at another. I wonder if you could make any similar generalization about politics?
DeleteDavid:
DeleteWith managing/coaching you just essentially just have one data point per game, or, in a sense, just one data point per season--in contrast with the situation with players, where you have multiple data points per game and thus, for a baseball player, hundreds of plate appearances per season. In that way, managing/coaching is like politics in that you have a small sample size.
A college football coach have a bunch of 10-1 and 9-2 seasons, and presumably this means that he's not a complete incompetent (in the same way that a politician who wins any elections at all has to have some level of political appeal), but these are small samples and highly correlated outcomes---you can do pretty well as a coach if you happen to get a good cohort of players. Beyond that, three key factors in success in college coaching are the school's reputation, its support for the team, and recruiting. The coach influence on the third and, to some extent, the second of those factors---but neither translate very well to the pro level.