Republican Kevin McCarthy began his speakership on a contentious note, requiring 15 rounds of voting to secure his position as House speaker.
However, he’s now presiding over a remarkable amount of consensus, according to a new poll from YouGov and The Economist.
The magazine’s pollsters gave “web-based interviews” to 1,500 U.S. adults between March 11 and 14, estimating the margin of error at 3.2 percent or less.
On Wednesday, the magazine published its findings. They lead a typical poll about the direction of the country… but they soon unveiled some shockingly good news for the House speaker.
39 percent of respondents reported a favorable opinion of McCarthy, with only 38 percent viewing him unfavorably. 41 percent of respondents approved of McCarthy’s job performance.
McCarthy has become the rare politician to carry a favorability rating with a plus sign next to it!
Even more surprisingly, McCarthy polled especially well with young people.
43 percent of adults under 30 held a favorable opinion of the House speaker, compared to only 40 percent of adults between the ages of 30 and 44.
Some young voters had already abandoned the Democrats after the F.B.I.’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s home, according to a prior poll reviewed by The Horn News.
The House speaker also polled well in urban America, with 40 percent of city dwellers reporting a favorable opinion of him. By contrast, only 39 percent of suburbanites viewed McCarthy favorably, despite McCarthy’s home district in California’s suburban interior.
In other words, McCarthy is cutting into the Democrats’ base… and he still polls well with conservatives, too.
64 percent of Trump voters harbored a favorable opinion of him, and so did more than two thirds of self-identified conservatives.
McCarthy has made headlines lately for passing some footage of the Capitol riot to Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson.
According to this new poll, more than two-thirds of respondents were aware that McCarthy had Carlson some footage of the Capitol riot. Only 38 percent of Americans disapproved.
The Economist is based in the U.K., and so it has faced questions about its capacity to survey Americans.
However, McCarthy is polling better than previous speakers in several polls.
By comparison, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., was sitting at 33 percent approval at the same point in his career, according to a YouGov/The Economist poll from 2016.
At the end of Ryan’s speakership, he was viewed negatively by a whopping 50 percent of Americans, according to a different poll from January 2019.
The Horn editorial team