A poll conducted earlier this year found more Missouri residents expressing an unfavorable view of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) than a favorable perspective. In polling, this question — of whether survey participants have a favorable view of the subject — is generally considered separately from whether respondents approve of the job that subject is doing in office, if they currently hold an elected position.
Hawley will be up for re-election next year. Although Missouri has a reputation for leaning towards Republicans, it is not without precedent for the state to have a Democratic Senator. Hawley himself replaced Claire McCaskill when he took office in 2019, and McCaskill is a Democrat. This time around, Hawley already has a high-profile Democratic challenger for next year in Lucas Kunce, whose career includes a stint of over a decade in the U.S. military. In the polling, which was the work of Change Research, 43 percent of overall participants indicated they had an unfavorable view of the Senator and 42 percent a favorable one. Over half the independents and around a quarter of the Republicans included in the poll also rejected him.
Hawley has distinguished himself while in office for, among other things, avidly supporting the effort in Congress to subvert the electoral college win nabbed by Joe Biden after the last presidential race. Hawley was the first Senator to announce an intention to object to electoral votes won by Biden when the race’s outcome was up for Congressional certification, and as the rules then required at least one member of each chamber to back an objection to electoral votes before the dispute moved to debate and a vote, Hawley’s support was crucial. (There was already House support.) His antics could be seen to have directly helped inspire the violence of January 6 by furthering the idea there was some kind of serious problem with the election results, which was never actually shown by any competent authority, judicial or otherwise, anywhere — and not for a lack of investigation (many, many investigations).
