Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek continues to have the lowest approval rating of any governor in the country, according to a new poll released Monday by research technology company Morning Consult.
Only 45% of Oregonians approved of Kotek’s job performance, according to the quarterly poll. Kotek’s approval rating is up from 42% in April, but still remains the lowest in the nation. The governor with the second-lowest approval rating was Democrat Katie Hobbs of Arizona, who had a 47% approval rating, according to the poll.
However, Kotek didn’t have the highest disapproval rating in the country because some Oregonians still don’t have an opinion of her. About 39% said they disapproved of Kotek’s performance, leaving 16% who neither approved nor disapproved of her performance. A total of 15 other governors had a disapproval rating the same or worse than Kotek. Democrat Tony Evers of Wisconsin had a 44% disapproval rating, the highest disapproval rating of any governor in the country, the poll found.
The most recent Morning Consult poll was conducted between April 1 and June 30 among representative samples of registered voters in each state. The margin of error was up to plus or minus 6 percentage points.
Following the previous Morning Consult poll in April, Kotek said she believed many Oregonians still didn’t know her.
“I’m confident that as we continue to communicate with Oregonians in a variety of ways, they’ll get to know me better and I hope they’ll like what I’m doing,” Kotek said during the April press conference.
Kotek has tried to introduce herself to the state through her commitment to visit all 36 counties in Oregon during her first year in office. She is more than halfway through that initiative.
Polls conducted by Morning Consult in the past few years consistently found that former Oregon Gov. Kate Brown was the least popular governor in the nation.
— Jamie Goldberg; jgoldberg@oregonian.com; 503-221-8228; @jamiebgoldberg
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