RI-01: Cicilline Not Too Popular

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I'm not going to post any text from the article (better safe than sorry, vis-a-vis copyright laws!) but his approval rating is a mere 17%. This same poll registers much higher approvals for Mayor Angel Taveras, his successor, and Senator Reed.

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You could always link to the actual survey:

http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/03/survey

When will pollsters stop using "fair" as a measure of popularity? All it does it skew the results negative, since news organizations will inevitably take "fair" to be negative, when I would argue it's pretty much the same as saying "no opinion".

The poll also finds 77% of respondents faulting Cicilline for Providence's budget problems during his tenure as Mayor, so it would stand to reason his approval rating being so low regardless of the wording.

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The crucial semantic differences between "fair" and "only fair" aside , even if one added all the "only fairs" to his positive column (a very over optimistic projection, IMHO), even then he gets only a 40-26 approve disapprove rating. Not so good, particularly for someone who narrowly won what should've been a safe Democratic seat even in 2010.

So why the hostility? Is Providence's budget woes really coming back to haunt him as Congressman? Is it the gay thing for non-Providencians not used to being represented by an openly gay man? Has he committed liberal apostasy in early votes on the Hill?

His successor is quoted as saying "I thought we were at a Category 3 hurricane, but this is a Category 5."

Also what may be lost on most people is that Cicilline's opponent, John Loughlin, was a poor candidate - including a controversial vote against some domestic violence bill and some damning remarks about Social Security that the Cicilline campaign was sure to saturate the air waves with.