December’s SUSA ratings just came out on Governor Kulongoski and the trends aren’t good for him, especially amongst those who identified themselves as “liberal” in the survey. Last month he was at an overall 44% approval rating. He’s down one percent to 43% this month, which is insignificant when taking into account the +/- 4.1% margin of error.

I always wonder about SUSA polls, though, because when examining the make up of voter idealogies in their Oregon poll, conservatives always outweigh liberals, which I find surprising considering the fact it’s Oregon. Moreover, party affiliation is weighted towards Independents (34% in Dec. and 36% in Nov.) who are a minority, albeit a growing one, in the state, and Republican respondents (33% and 32%) represent a higher percentage over Democrats (32% and 30%,) despite the higher Dem registration numbers.

The reason Kulongoski is in trouble, even though SUSA’s sampling of Oregon voters may not be representative, has to do with the results coming from the liberal respondents in the poll. These are the people who most likely are politically active and who step up to volunteer during an election year. They’re the ones who phone bank, help raise money and knock on doors. It’s much easier to get these volunteers when they’re excited about their candidate, but no one is excited about Ted these days. If liberals in Multnomah County decide not to vote for Kulongoski (if he makes it out of the primary) next November, he won’t carry the state.

It’s not that he has to become a raging liberal in order to get the base excited, but he needs to show some initiative in being a leader on critical issues such as school funding, the environment and health care. And his current love affair with gambling interests isn’t helping.

And then we’ve got former governor John Kitzhaber considering a run, which adds another interesting layer to the mix. Is he dangling this consideration in order to slap Kulongoski into shape? No doubt, things are heating up.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.