Kyrsten Sinema isn’t very popular.
In a new poll measuring potential voters’ reactions to a three-candidate contest featuring the incumbent, Ruben Gallego on the Democratic ticket, and Kari Lake nominated by the GOP, Sinema — a first-term Senator in Arizona — got just 13 percent of the support. Gallego is a Democratic Congressman currently serving in Arizona, and his own team trumpeted these survey numbers, which are from Public Policy Polling, in a press release, further adding to the impression he might soon be announcing a campaign. Sinema is up for re-election in 2024, but her recently announced decision to re-register as an independent instead of with the Democratic Party means she would not be facing Gallego or any other candidate in a primary. The widespread interest in conducting a primary challenge was already well-known before she announced she was leaving the party, and it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch to connect the two.
In the new Public Policy Polling numbers, only 31 percent of overall respondents provided a favorable opinion of the Senator. With Biden voters, it’s only 20 percent! In both the results with and without Sinema, Gallego and Lake were nearly tied. With Sinema, it was Lake ahead by a single percentage point, while when Sinema was out of the race, it was Gallego — potentially connected to a Sinema campaign splitting the vote of those who would support Democrats, even though she isn’t exactly known for helping advance the Democratic agenda anyway.
In one highlight, she helped vote down changes to the filibuster rules that would have allowed the Senate to pass voting rights protections named after the late Congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis. The effort would have bulked back up the federal government’s power to review local changes to the handling of elections before officials implemented them. She was also involved in an effort to put abortion protections into federal law but wouldn’t support alterations to the filibuster rules allowing Congress to actually enact that initiative either.
Two Democratic campaign firms, including the pollster Impact Research, will also reportedly no longer be working with the Sinema campaign. She will also soon lose access to NGP VAN databases of Democratic voters’ personal details — info that is critical to some basic campaign outreach operations.
