Public Policy Polling published some discouraging news for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) earlier this week, noting that the Republican’s approval rating has dropped to just 37%, making him the least popular senator in the nation.
The news wasn’t all bad — the same poll showed McConnell narrowly leading his most likely Democratic challengers — but it had to be upsetting for the Senate’s top Republican to see a poll like this one at a sensitive time in Washington, less than two years before his re-election bid.
McConnell’s campaign manager, former Ron Paul aide Jesse Benton, has an explanation for the disappointing numbers: Public Policy Polling is deliberately manufacturing bogus data, as part of a larger Democratic conspiracy. Joe Sonka published a message Benton wrote yesterday:
On the first day of Republican Campaign Manager School, they teach us to ignore PPP polls. You see, PPP is a partisan Democrat polling firm, and they make their living giving the Democrat Party numbers they want to see.
Benton added, “Cooked polls are certainly only the start of the liberals’ plans.”
It’s an interesting theory, I suppose, but it leads to some related questions. If Public Policy Polling were deliberately manufacturing bogus survey results to make McConnell look bad, wouldn’t the pollster have shown him losing to his likely Democratic challengers? And if this were part of a larger Democratic plot, wouldn’t PPP have shown some other, more vulnerable Republican incumbents as the least popular senators?









