100 Days In, New Republican Governors Off To A Strong Start

Nearly 100 days into most of their terms, newly elected Republican governors are taking action in office and doing exactly what they said they would do on the campaign trail – and earning high approval ratings in the process. New polling from Morning Consult shows that the 5 new Republican governors elected this past November – Phil Scott in Vermont, Eric Greitens in Missouri, Chris Sununu in New Hampshire, Eric Holcomb in Indiana, and Doug Burgum in North Dakota – are all off to a strong start and enjoying high job ratings.

Morning Consult reports:

From Vermont to Missouri and New Hampshire, voters are happier with their new Republican governors than they were with the Democrats who used to lead their states, according to the new Morning Consult Governor Approval Rankings.

The trend in favor of Republicans was strongest in Vermont, where Phil Scott, the state’s former lieutenant governor, became only the second Republican to serve as his state’s chief executive since 1991.

Scott — who beat the state’s former state Transportation Secretary Susan Minter, a Democrat, by more than 11 points — begins his tenure with the approval of 68 percent of his voters, 15 points higher than his Democratic predecessor, Gov. Peter Shumlin.

A similar, though less distinct, change was also evident in Missouri. Gov. Eric Greitens, the self-described political outsider who shocked the Republican Party with his nomination, beat Democratic state Attorney General Chris Koster by 6 points…

But as he pushes an ambitious conservative agenda and eyes a national future, he begins his administration with support from over half (51 percent) of his state’s voters. His predecessor, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon, ended his tenure with support from 46 percent of voters — down 4 points from earlier in 2016.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, the Republican who replaced Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, is 3 points more popular than she was before she headed to Washington to serve in the Senate. More than half (55 percent) of voters approve of him, compared with 52 percent who approved of her last fall. 

Indiana and North Dakota — two states that replaced their Republican governors with new ones — have governors with markedly higher approval than their predecessors. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, elected to replace now-Vice President Mike Pence, is approved of by 54 percent of Indianans…

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, who won with 77 percent of the vote last November, is approved of by 69 percent of voters.