Governor Dan McKee has the lowest approval rating of the country’s 50 state chief executives, and the highest disapproval rating of any governor seeking reelection next year, according to the latest quarterly survey from Morning Consult.
McKee’s 40 percent approval rate is slightly lower than Iowa’s outgoing Republican Governor, Kim Reynolds, but his 44 percent disapproval rating was behind Reynolds and Maine Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat who recently announced plans to challenge Republican US Senator Susan Collins.
The news isn’t all bad for McKee: A 40 percent approval rating is substantially higher than several other polls this year about Rhode Island’s incumbent governor. For example, the University of New Hampshire survey published late last month, pegged McKee at 24 percent approval, 71 percent disapproval. Then again, McKee peaked at 60 percent approval during his first year as governor, and was still over 50 percent approval during the third quarter of 2023.
The bigger picture: There isn’t much of a fresh take to offer on the new Morning Consult numbers. We know the lay of the land.
McKee’s campaign will argue that at the same point in 2017, Gina Raimondo had a 41 percent approval rating and a 47 percent disapproval rating. And she easily won reelection a year later.
What they conveniently ignore is that Raimondo didn’t have a Democratic primary opponent in October 2017. Matt Brown didn’t open a campaign account until March of 2018, and Raimondo ended up winning that primary by more than 20 percentage points.
In McKee’s case, he already has a credible, better-funded challenger in Helena Foulkes, who lost to him by only 3 percentage points in the 2022 primary. And House Speaker Joe Shekarchi loves nothing more than the state’s Democratic powerbrokers pushing him to enter the race.
The rest of New England: Three of the region’s governors rank in the top 10 nationwide for approval rating.
Vermont Governor Phil Scott, a Republican, has the highest approval in the country, at 74 percent; Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, is at 61 percent; and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, also a Democrat, is at 59 percent.
New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, is at 53 percent approval, and Maine’s Mills was at 50 percent.
This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you’d like to receive it via email Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.