Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) approval rating has sunk to a new low, as nearly six in ten Florida voters now say they disapprove of their chief executive’s job performance barely 5 months into his tenure, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday morning.
Scott was one of the new Republican governor’s swept into office last year as anti-incumbent rage thwarted Democrats nationwide. But since his inauguration, Scott has pursued a number of unpopular proposals, capped off by a recently-passed budget he is set to sign this week that voters overwhelmingly dislike by a two to one margin.
In the poll, 57% of registered voters said they’re unhappy with how Scott has handled his job as governor, a record high. At the same time, only 29% of voters said they approved of Scott’s job performance, making Scott the most unpopular of 10 governors Quinnipiac has surveyed this year.
Scott’s approval rating has gone from bad to horrendous since Quinnipiac last checked in on him back in April. At that time, 35% of voters approved of Scott’s job performance, while 48% disapproved.
The current TPM Poll Average shows that 46.2% of Floridians disapprove of Scott’s job performance, while 31.8% approve of it.
Scott’s approval rating cratered shortly after he was sworn in when the first-term governor pushed a plan to eliminate tenure for new teachers, and to tie pay to performance levels. By March, polls showed Scott — who won a nail biter last year by a one-point margin — losing a do-over election by a whopping 20 points.
The latest unpopular move by Scott is the budget he’s set to sign this week, one which will slash around $4 billion, including a $1.35 billion cut to education spending, and a $1 billion reduction in Medicaid funding.
In the poll, 53% of voters said they didn’t like the new budget, while just 24% said they did. And by a similar margin, 54% said that budget was “unfair” to people like them, while 24% said it was not.
The poll was conducted May 17-23 among 1,196 registered voters. It has a margin of error of 2.8%.