The Direction of the State and Favorability of Political Institutions
By Ken Warren, Ph.D., SLU/YouGov Poll Associate Director
We found in our February 2023 SLU/YouGov Poll that Missouri’s likely voters rated the job performance of their elected public officials quite positively compared to President Joe Biden, as discussed in another report. We found that Missouri likely voters think that things in Missouri are going quite well compared to what is happening nationally. When likely Missouri voters were asked whether they approve of the U.S. Congress’s job performance, 22% approved with only 2% saying they “strongly approve” with only another 20% “approving”. But when asked to rate the job performance of the Missouri legislature, 51% approved with 8% “strongly approving” and 43% “approving”. The Missouri legislature received a 29% better performance score from likely Missouri voters than the U.S. Congress.
However, Missouri’s likely voters did give the U.S. Supreme Court a fairly positive job performance score (48%) with 7% “strongly approving” and 41% “approving”. This is likely due to the fact that President Trump, still popular in Missouri, appointed three conservative justices to Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Barrett, allowing the Supreme Court to hand down court decisions that are acceptable to most Missourians. However, it would not be accurate to say that Missourians are pleased with the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision, overturning Roe v. Wade. In our August 2022 poll, we found that even rather conservative Missouri voters were not on board with that decision. Only 47% of Missouri’s likely voters agreed with the decision with 31% “strongly agreeing” and 16% “agreeing”, while 50% disagreed with the decision (12% “disagreeing” with 38% “strongly disagreeing”. Our recent poll’s crosstabs revealed predictable findings. We found that men (58%) were much more supportive of the Supreme Court’s performance than women (39%); Republicans were much more likely to approve of the Court’s performance than Democrats; 71% to 18% respectively. Rural voters approved of the Supreme Court’s performance more than metro voters with, for example, 68% approval in SE Missouri, but only 37% approving in the KC metro area.
Missouri likely voters are split over whether “the State of Missouri is on the right track and headed in a good direction” with 40% agreeing and 44% disagreeing. But only a small percentage, 16%, agree that the U.S government “is on the right track and headed in a good direction” with a whopping 73% saying they “disagree”. Crosstabs disclosed that white Missouri likely voters (75%), Republicans (94%), those below a college degree (74%, some college, and 77%, high school degree), and those living in rural regions, are more apt to agree that the U.S. is not on the right track and not headed in a good direction. This is rather predictable since Missouri’s conservative red state politics are not in sync with the more liberal direction of national politics, reflected in the fact that Biden won the presidential election by 4.4% (by about seven million votes), yet lost in Missouri by a “blow-out” margin, 15.4%, for a difference of 19.8%.
