The last time we checked in on Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s approval rating was last month, when a poll from Virginia Commonwealth University showed her in the unhappy position of being “underwater” — with more people disapproving of her job performance than approving of it.
Polls are one thing; actual events are another. A few weeks ago, the governor visited the Galax Old-Time Fiddlers Convention and was roundly booed. Maybe not surprising given how poorly she and other Democrats run in rural Virginia these days, but, still, there once was a time when people would have clapped politely or just sat silent.
Based on those things, it’s fair to believe that Virginia’s 75th governor is not particularly popular.
This is why we call this the news business, though, because now we have something new: A Morning Consult poll that came out last week gives a very different account of Spanberger’s standing in Virginia. It shows Spanberger’s approval rating on the plus side by a wide margin, and not that much different from where her Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, stood (depending on which metrics you want to use).
The specific numbers: The VCU Commonwealth Poll found that 44% of those surveyed approved of Spanberger’s job performance, 46% disapproved. It’s never good to be on the negative side, and Spanberger’s numbers were particularly low. A separate Washington Post-Schar School poll earlier in the year showed she started off with the lowest approval rating of any Virginia governor since such polls began in the early 1990s — 47% approval, 46% disapproval. The difference between that 47% and the 44% in the Commonwealth Poll may be statistically insignificant. Moreover, both showed her approval and disapproval ratings about the same.
Now Morning Consult puts Spanberger at 54% approval, 37% disapproval. That’s a net approval rating of +17 percentage points. Youngkin’s net approval rating was +21 percentage points in a Morning Consult poll in mid-2025. The difference between +17 and +21 may be another one of those things that isn’t really statistically significant.
So what gives?
The obvious question, especially if you’re not a fan of the governor, is whether this poll is wrong. At the risk of being pedantic, polls are never wrong. They always accurately measure their sample. The question is whether the sample is representative of Virginia at large. That’s harder to say. The famed data cruncher Nate Silver gives Morning Consult a B- rating as a pollster, a mid-tier ranking. (The Washington Post got an A+.) ActiVote, an app that aggregates election information, ranks Morning Consult 29th out of 136 pollsters and demotes the Washington Post to 38th, so obviously there’s some disagreement about pollster ratings in general. Chaz Nuttycombe of the State Navigate site posts that “Morning Consult’s Gov approval ratings are notoriously bad (way too rosy on net approvals).” Those on the western side of the state may find these Morning Consult numbers particularly hard to comprehend, but keep in mind that western Virginia is not representative of the state as a whole.
If Morning Consult is right, then the other question is, what changed? That’s easier to answer. Two issues that may have dragged down Spanberger’s initial ratings have subsided. She came into office with a reputation for rising above partisanship — and immediately got pulled into one of the most partisan types of political arguments we can ever have: redistricting. Then there was the drawn-out budget stalemate, with data centers at the center. The former definitely didn’t help Spanberger; the latter probably didn’t. In either case, both are now in the rear view mirror — although strong feelings do linger in some quarters. With those issues no longer in the picture, perhaps Spanberger’s approval ratings have risen to what might be normal for a Virginia governor.
They are certainly normal for other governors around the country. It’s always risky to compare one poll with another — different methodologies, and all that. However, Morning Consult has conducted polls all over the country, which means we can compare its Virginia results with what the firm has found elsewhere. At least that way we’re dealing with a consistent methodology and can compare Spanberger’s rankings with other governors. Put another way, if the Morning Consult numbers are wrong about Spanberger, they’re likely wrong about everybody, so maybe what we should pay attention to is her relative position.
When we do that, we find Spanberger pretty much smack in the middle of America’s governors. She ranks as the 22nd most approved-of governor, meaning she’s a little closer to the top than she is the bottom. There are five other governors with an approval rating of 54%, so Spanberger is in line with the governors of California (Gavin Newsom), Illinois (J.B. Pritzker), Michigan (Gretchen Wimmer), Montana (Greg Gianforte), New Mexico (Michelle Lujan Grisham) and Wisconsin (Tony Evers). I’ll just point out that some of those governors have often been mentioned as potential presidential candidates.
Approval ratings of every Virginia governor. Source: Morning Consult.
I don’t know if we can say that Spanberger is over-performing, but some of the governors ranked with her certainly seem to be under-performing. Spanberger governs a state with a slight Democratic tilt — let’s color it light blue — and has a 54% approval rating. Newsom and Pritzker govern bright blue states and have the same score. Shouldn’t they be scoring better? That raises the question (at least in my mind) as to why they are considered presidential timber by Democrats if that’s the best they can do in an overwhelmingly Democratic state? If Democrats were concerned with electability (and logically, both parties should be concerned with electability), then the Democrats should be looking at Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who has a 60% approval rating in a Republican state, or Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has a 61% approval rating in a swing state. Likewise, Republicans ought to be looking at Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who has a 62% rating in another swing state — but Kemp now seems to be disregarded by his own party, even as the general public seems to love him. That’s part of the problem with politics right there, but I digress.
The nation’s most popular governor is an anomaly — Phil Scott is a Republican in Vermont, a Democratic state that sends Bernie Sanders to Washington. Scott floats in the stratosphere with a 71% approval rating, which means he has a higher approval rating in the Green Mountain State than Sanders does. Two other Republican governors near the top of the approval list are Republicans in small, overwhelmingly Republican states — Mark Gordon in Wyoming has a 70% approval rating, Kelly Armstrong in North Dakota is at 67%.
At the bottom are 11 governors who come in under 50% — five of those are officially “under water” with higher disapproval ratings than approval ratings. Those are the governors of Minnesota (Tim Walz, who in hindsight looks like a poor choice for vice president two years ago), Alaska, Oregon, Rhode Island and Iowa. If Nuttycombe is right and Morning Consult overstates the approval ratings, then these governors at the bottom of the list are really in trouble.
The flip side of approval ratings are disapproval ratings. Spanberger is pretty much in the middle there, too. The numbers I’m about to cite are statistically insignificant, but I can’t help but notice that Newsom and Pritzker, who have the political advantage of being in strongly Democratic states, have somewhat higher disapproval ratings than Spanberger does in a less Democratic state — 40% disapproval for them to 37% disapproval for her.
Every governor is probably glad they are not Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, which recently has been a Republican state, who somehow has gotten into a position where she has only a 42% approval rating and a 51% disapproval rating. Those figures open the door to some other observations from the Morning Consult polling:
Trump’s negatives are higher than his positives in 37 states
These are the numbers that ought to scare Republicans as they look to the fall elections. Congressional midterms historically cut against the president’s party, but Trump is in a particularly bad situation in the polls. The only states where his approval ratings are higher than his disapproval ratings are a smattering of states in the Rockies, the Midwest and the South. Those are core Republican states, but there are also some ordinarily Republican states in those regions where Trump is polling poorly. The Iowa governor’s situation referenced above is only part of the poor Republican position right now in Iowa. Trump has just a 42% approval rating there but a 56% disapproval rating. Both of its sitting Republican senators are also underwater, with approval ratings at 40% and 41%.
This should be a particular concern for Republicans because there’s a Senate race there this fall — the unpopular Jodi Ernst is retiring and the race to succeed her is tighter than we’d expect in a “normal” year.
Indeed, in other states with key Senate races — Alaska, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, even Texas — Trump’s approval rating is in the net negative range in all of them, sometimes by large margins. (In Maine, 38% approval, 61% disapproval). If Republican candidates win there, it will be a combination of their own efforts and voter distrust of Democrats because, based on these numbers, if the election were purely about Trump, we’d see a big blue wave that would wash into places that haven’t seen a Democratic senator in a long time.
That brings us back to Virginia:
Warner is one of the most popular senators in the U.S.
In Virginia, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, is running for a fourth term against Republican Bert Mizusawa. Warner has a 56% approval rating, according to Morning Consult, which ties him for the 11th-most-popular senator in the 100-member body. The most popular senator in his or her home state is Sanders, with a 68% approval rating. Coming in second are Democrat Peter Welch, the other senator from Vermont, and Republican John Hoeven of North Dakota.
The least popular senator right now with home-state voters is Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who comes in at 26% approval, 65% disapproval. It’s unclear how much of that is due to his criticism of Trump and how much due to his recent health issues.
Finally, I notice this:
Some states are happy, some aren’t
What’s in that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream? Whatever it is, Vermont voters are unusually happy. They love their Republican governor (the most popular in the country), and they love their two Democratic (or Democratic-aligned) senators, who rank No. 1 and 3 for popularity.
If the rest of the country were as satisfied as Vermonters seem to be, we’d be in a very different place.
Virginians also seem reasonably happy — Warner gets a 56% approval rating, Spanberger 54%, Sen. Tim Kaine 52%.
On the other end of the scale, we have those very unhappy Iowans. They don’t like their governor. They don’t like either of their senators. They’re just out of sorts all around. In all, Morning Consult finds six states where the governor and both senators have approval ratings under 50% — Alaska, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Utah. All six are Republican states. Read into that what you will — maybe not too much because there are other Republican states where all three officials have approval ratings over 50%.
The bottom line here is that we may need to reappraise the perception that Spanberger is unpopular. To form a fuller picture, we really need more polls, but this is what we have now.
I’ll look at some other data in the Morning Consult poll in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter that goes out on Fridays.
