23/36: Another poll shows Ocasio-Cortez's favorable rating underwater

There will be many polls in the months and years to come showing that AOC is an unpopular figure.

Let this serve as formal notice that I’ll be blogging all of them.

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In fairness, this poll isn’t as bad for her as the recent one from Siena of her, gulp, home state.

Democrats like her a bunch, although many still haven’t heard of her. Republicans detest her. Independents are negative on balance although that may only be because right-leaning indies are seeing more negative coverage of her in righty media than left-leaning indies are seeing positive coverage of her in lefty media. She’s doing better here among women and voters 18-34 than she did in the Siena poll too, and on a separate question about whether she’s good or bad for the Democratic Party, she’s actually in favorable territory among independents. (Narrowly, at 34/32.)

The most dramatic divide, obviously, is the racial one. She’s at +9 among Latinos, +19 among blacks, and … -24 among whites. The Siena poll also showed a strong racial divide, with AOC at +30 among black New Yorkers, +24 among Latino ones, and -21 among white ones. Whites are more familiar with her in both polls than blacks or Latinos are, which again may be a function of how much coverage she gets in righty media. Whites lean Republican so they’re consuming tons of negative coverage of her from their favorite news sources; news outlets favored by blacks and Latinos likely aren’t covering her to the same extent. If the future of American politics is an increasingly white Republican Party wrestling with an increasingly minority Democratic Party, AOC may be a perfectly divisive figure as her star rises.

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Note too that her unfavorable rating is higher at home in New York, at 44 percent, than it is nationally, a bad result for Ocasio-Cortez considering that her path to higher office is restricted to her home state until she turns 35 and that even prominent House members tend to be longshots when running for president. Why would New Yorkers dislike her more than voters nationally? Possibly it’s a simple matter of familiarity breeding contempt, with her home state digesting more AOC coverage daily than the rest of the country, but it might also be fallout related to the collapse of the Amazon HQ2 deal. Fully 67 percent said in the recent Siena poll that it was a bad thing for New York when Amazon pulled the plug, and when asked if Ocasio-Cortez was a “hero” or “villain” in that decision, New Yorkers split 12/38. She may have damaged herself locally in a way that she hasn’t nationally.

I’ll leave you with this from Quinnipiac in lieu of an exit question. Those who think the left doesn’t stand a chance of replacing the electoral college with a national popular vote should be careful.

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