Gov. Josh Shapiro remains more popular with Pennsylvania voters than President Donald Trump, according to a poll released Thursday.<\/p>\n
Half of Pennsylvania\u2019s registered voters believe Shapiro is doing an \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood\u201d job in the state\u2019s highest office, while 44% rate his performance as \u201cfair\u201d or \u201cpoor,\u201d the Franklin & Marshall College Poll showed.<\/p>\n
Shapiro\u2019s approval rating dipped slightly from five months ago, when 51% of voters thought he was doing a \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cexcellent\u201d job.<\/p>\n
About 39% of voters rated Trump\u2019s performance as \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood,\u201d while 61% think he\u2019s doing a \u201cfair\u201d or \u201cpoor\u201d job, the poll showed. About 41% of voters thought Trump was doing an \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood\u201d job five months ago.<\/p>\n
Despite those unfavorable numbers, poll director Berwood Yost wrote, \u201cPresident Trump\u2019s net approval ratings are better than Barack Obama\u2019s and George Bush\u2019s job approval ratings in Pennsylvania at the same point in their presidencies, although all three incumbents were deeply unpopular.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shapiro, a Democrat from Montgomery County, is up for reelection in this year\u2019s pivotal midterm elections. The poll showed him leading his likely Republican challenger, state Treasurer Stacy Garrity of Bradford County, 48% to 28%. About 7% of voters said they planned to vote for someone else, while 17% remain undecided.<\/p>\n
Other key findings:<\/p>\n
44% of voters think Pennsylvania is \u201con the wrong track,\u201d compared to 39% who believe it\u2019s \u201cheaded in the right direction.\u201d The last time a majority of Pennsylvania voters thought the state was headed in the right direction: January 2020.30% of voters cited the economy \u2014 including unemployment, housing and real estate costs, and higher gas and utility prices \u2014 as the biggest problem facing Pennsylvania. Among those voters, 45% said Democrats are better suited to address the problem, while 25% said Republicans are.55% of voters oppose the methods that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is using to enforce immigration laws, while 45% support them.42% of voters said the Trump administration is doing an \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood\u201d dealing with immigration, down from 47% in October.37% of voters think the administration is doing an \u201cexcellent\u201d or \u201cgood\u201d handling foreign policy matters, down from 42% in October.66% of voters said they had a \u201cgreat deal\u201d or \u201cfair\u201d amount of trust in the state\u2019s election processes. A majority of Republicans (60%) oppose changing election administration from state to federal control, compared to 63% of independents or members of other parties and 84% of Democrats.<\/p>\n
The poll, conducted between Feb. 18 and March 1, had a margin of error of 4.1%, according to Franklin & Marshall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Josh Shapiro remains more popular with Pennsylvania voters than President Donald Trump, according to a poll released…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-130787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}