John McCain says Arizonans like him representing them in Congress, despite what a “bogus poll” may show.
The Republican senator made the comment Monday in reference to a possible run for reelection and did not specify the poll he was referring to.
But the director of Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, which found last week in a survey that McCain was the least popular senator in the country, suggests he remember the example of failed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney before brushing off unfavorable poll numbers.
“We’ve used the same methodology to measure the approval ratings of more than 85 Senators in their home states, and Senator McCain has the worst approval numbers of any of them,” PPP Director Tom Jensen told TPM in an email. “That’s because he’s unpopular within his own party and unlike other Republican Senators who have a reputation for working across party lines – the Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowskis of the world – he hasn’t earned much popularity with Democrats either.”
“I think we saw in 2012 what happens when Republicans try to just dismiss and ignore poll findings that they don’t like,” he added.
McCain himself told TPM after the 2012 election wrapped that he had a feeling Romney’s internal polling gave an overly rosy outlook on his actual chance of victory.
“Look, everybody knows their polls were wrong,” he said at the time. “I mean, they admit that.”
