The polling firm Public Policy Polling found Gov. Snyder's positive poll numbers dropping precipitously.
PPP is described as a "Democratic-leaning" survey firm, so it's no surprise they wanted to see how Gov. Snyder is faring after passing the controversial 'right-to-work' legislation in the state.
The firm is comparing their results from data gathered on Gov. Snyder prior to the hullabaloo around the legislature's prolific lame-duck session.
(For more background on PPP, see this profile from NPR.)
On November 12, PPP posted that Gov. Snyder was favored to win against a generic Democratic candidate (47 Snyder/41 Dem).
Today, he's an underdog against a generic Democratic candidate, and he's even down when hypothetically running against the candidate he beat, Democratic Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero (47 Bernero/39 Snyder).
From PPP:
We now find Snyder as one of the most unpopular Governors in the country. Only 38% of voters approve of him to 56% who disapprove. There are only 2 other sitting Governors we've polled on who have a worse net approval rating than Snyder's -18. He's dropped a net 28 points from our last poll on him, the weekend before the election, when he was at a +10 spread (47/37).
The polling firm makes the obvious point that the numbers could change, as they did for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. But Snyder has more ground to make up.
Clearly he and the Republicans in the legislature are hoping that voters will have forgotten about this by 2014, and that they will see a recovery in their standing similar to Scott Walker in Wisconsin. It's worth noting though that Walker was at a 46/52 approval rating in early March of 2011, right after Wisconsin passed its controversial legislation. Snyder's net approval is 12 points worse than that right now. So it remains to be seen whether he can recover again.
Snyder might begin working on making that ground up this afternoon by vetoing an unpopular concealed weapons bill passed at the last minute by the Republican led state Legislature.
