I just can not understand for the life of me why Conrad and Dorgan are so darn well liked!
If you look at their ratings they're fairly liberal, how do they get so much support in North Dakota??
There appears to be a strong small state bias to the ratings. Perhaps in a smaller community, there is less opportunity to form subgroups that people can identify with.
In other cases, it appears that there is a difference based on how well the senator is known. For example McCain has a 67%-26% approval rating (93% of people rated him), while Kyl has a 49%-31% approval rating (3 times as many people withheld an opinion, but only a few more had a negative opinion).
And even some of the disapproves might be from people who don't know who Jon Kyl is. On an issue or an election, "undecided" can mean that you are still gathering information so as to make your decision later. You might not be willing to admit that you have no opinion on someone you hired 10 years ago.
