Sen. Amy Klobuchar

Today’s Star Tribune Minnesota Poll — here it is — showing Sen. Amy Klobuchar with a 61 percent job approval rating is a clear sign that she hasn’t made any missteps in her first 10 months in Washington. The job approval rating is about the same as her vote total when she was elected last year — with 58 percent of the vote.

But there’s no question that Klobuchar’s high standing is unusual.

Consider these Minnesota Poll job approval ratings for the last four U.S. senators from Minnesota when they were approximately a year into their first term. Only one other senator — Republican Norm Coleman — had a rating higher than 50 percent:

Norm Coleman, R: 12 months in (Jan. 2004) — 54 percent
Mark Dayton, D: 13 months in (Feb. 2002) — 46 percent
Rod Grams, R: 9 months in (Sept. 1995) — 37 percent
Paul Wellstone, D: 12 months in (Jan. 1992) 50 percent

The Grams findings were striking because they showed that 36 percent of Minnesotans had no opinion regarding his job performance. Only 27 percent disapproved.

Wellstone’s 50 percent rating represented a quick rehabilitation from his first job approval just three months into his term — 35 percent. His vocal protests against the Gulf War, including at the Vietnam War Memorial — drew lots of criticism.

(No, I didn’t forget Sen. Dean Barkley. Because he served only a matter of weeks to fill out Wellstone’s term, we don’t have any job approval polls on him.)

Here’s another way to look at Klobuchar’s numbers — in comparison to other members of her freshman senate class. Here are poll numbers I was able to find:

Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.: 54 percent in a Survey USA poll in September.
Robert Casey, Jr., D-Pa.: 49 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll in August.
Jim Webb, D-Va.: 46 percent in a Survey USA poll in September.
Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio: 45 percent in a Survey USA poll in September.
Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.: 41 percent in a Brown University Taubman Center poll in September. That poll asked people to rate his job performance, and 7 percent said excellent and 34 percent said good.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty

If anyone knows of job approval polls for the other freshmen — Democrats Ben Cardin, Md., and Jon Tester, Mont.; Republican Bob Corker, Tenn.; and independent Bernie Sanders, Vt., — please add them below.

What do you make of Klobuchar’s high ride in the poll? I also wonder whether Klobuchar’s 61 percent and Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s 59 percent job approval make them the highest-regarded Senator/Governor duo from opposite parties in the country.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 6:25 am and is filed under Amy Klobuchar, Main, Norm Coleman, Senate, Tim Pawlenty. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.