Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey remains popular among Bay State voters, but not popular enough to retain her perch among the nation’s Top 10 most popular state governors, according to a new Morning Consult poll out Monday.
The Democratic governor’s popularity still stands at 59%, making her the most popular of the three statewide elected officials tested in a pair of new canvasses released by the polling organization.
Twenty-eight percent of Bay State residents disapproved of Healey, compared to 13% who were undecided, or who did not know enough to form an opinion, according to the poll.
Democratic U.S. Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, who is up for re-election this fall, each have 53% approval ratings in a new Morning Consult Senate poll.
The ranks of voters who disapprove of Warren, however, is slightly higher than Markey’s, at 36% and 27%, respectively.
Slightly more than a quarter of voters (28%) said they disapproved of Healey, a former state attorney general, who’s found her first two years in office beset by budgetary challenges, including the skyrocketing cost of the state’s emergency shelter system.
One New England governor, Republican Chris Sununu, of New Hampshire, moved into the ranks of the top 10 most popular state chief executives, according to the poll.
Healey, fellow Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, of Maryland, and Republican Doug Burgum, of North Dakota, who briefly sought the GOP nomination for president, all slid out of the top 10 in the new poll.
Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee, a Democrat, meanwhile, ranked among the nation’s most unpopular governors, according to the new canvass.
By any measure, Healey’s approvals remain strong with her first re-election bid now two years away.
Healey’s predecessor, Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, saw approval ratings of 52% in 2021, after they hit a high of 68% in 2020, according to a UMass Amherst/WCVB-TV Poll released in October 2022.
The data in the poll was derived from “trailing three-month averages of monthly roll-ups derived from Morning Consult’s daily U.S. tracking survey,” according to Morning Consult.
