Nearly half of Arkansas respondents approve of the job Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) is doing as the state’s governor, resulting in the lowest approval rating an Arkansas governor has received since her father, former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R).
In a new Arkansas Poll published Wednesday, the survey found that 48 percent of state respondents approve of the job Sanders is doing as governor, while 39 percent of those surveyed disapprove of the job she’s doing as governor.
Sanders’s approval rating is the lowest for any Arkansas governor since 2003, when 47 percent of respondents approved of the job her father was doing as governor.
This is the first time the annual survey, published through the University of Arkansas, has polled results based on Sanders’s approval rating among state residents.
Sixty-one percent of state respondents said the state is headed in the right direction, while 33 percent of those surveyed think otherwise, according to the poll.
When asked about their financial concerns, 36 percent of respondents said they are worse off financially this year than compared with last year, while 18 percent of those surveyed said their financial situation has gotten better.
Forty-five percent of respondents said their financial situation has remained the same in the past year, the poll said.
The poll comes nearly a year after Sanders, who previously served as a White House press secretary under the Trump administration, was elected to become the state’s new governor, defeating Democrat Chris Jones in the gubernatorial election.
Sanders, who became the first woman to serve as Arkansas governor, also gave the GOP’s official response to President Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this year.
The Arkansas Poll was conducted from Oct. 4-22 with a total of 801 respondents participating in the survey. The poll’s margin of error was 3.5 percentage points.