Change Massachusetts Doesn’t Believe In

While Democrats across the country are being taken in by Barack Obama’s message of “hope,” Massachusetts voters have learned relatively quickly that hope is currency not nearly worth its weight in words. Recent polls are showing Deval Patrick with a disapproval rating of 56% — undoubtedly reflecting fallout from his casino plan blunder.

Gov. Deval Patrick rode into office 16 months ago on a wave of hope and optimism, but the public’s patience for change in the politics of Beacon Hill appears to be waning.

A new poll released yesterday shows that Patrick’s approval rating is at an all-time low, with just 41 percent of adults over 18 saying they approve of the job Patrick is doing as governor.

Another 56 percent of responders said they disapprove, just a month after those numbers were reversed with 53 percent approving of Patrick’s work from the corner office.

The poll, sponsored by WBZ-TV and conducted by Survey USA, surveyed 600 adults earlier this month and has a margin of error of 4.1 percent.

While Democrats still have faith in the governor, the poll shows that 60 percent of Independent voters are unhappy with the results they are seeing from the Patrick administration, and even self-identified liberals are evenly split on the governor’s job performance.

Jon Keller notes the downward trend of Deval’s poll numbers, and concludes that he’s unlikely to turn them around.

The second week of April was, by the roller-coaster standards of the Patrick era, a pretty good one for the governor. He won legislative approval for some of his long-sought corporate tax hikes, touted progress on several job-development initiatives, and won plaudits for a widely-covered speech on the economy. But when Survey USA went into the field the weekend of April 11 for its regular tracking of the governor’s job approval rating, the results marked an all-time low.

Here are the numbers, just reported to us by Survey USA today. They show Patrick winning approval from an anemic 41% of registered voters, while an astonishing 56% give thumbs down.

A special survey we commissioned with a smaller sample on April 9th had the spread at 41-49%. But it’s probably better for direct comparison purposes to match these results up with the last 600-adult tracking poll taken in mid-February (before Bookgate).

Back then, Patrick’s approval/disapproval was 47-45%, not great, but not that bad. But now, his disapproval is off the charts, especially among men: 61% of them now disapprove of his work, up from 47% in mid-winter. All age groups are markedly less satisfied with Patrick’s performance now than they were two months ago, none more so than the 35-54 demographic, where his approval has collapsed from 44% to 30% and his disapproval has jumped an eye-popping 18 points to 68%, George W. Bush-like numbers. Democrats are losing patience, too; his 61-31% spread of February has dwindled to 53-44%. In the ideological categories, moderates continue to desert Patrick. And get this: even liberals, who approved of his work by a whopping 70-25% spread back then, are now evenly divided on the topic. And one final note: with the warning that they’re only about 20% of the sample in each survey, a relatively small slice that could skew the numbers somewhat, voters in southeastern Massachusetts (including the Cape) seem to be especially alienated. His rating there was 47-44% in February; now, it’s 31-66%.

I don’t know if he has a chance of seeing his numbers improve in the near future. Deval Patrick seems determined to push forward with his casino plan despite fierce opposition… even from within his own party. Given Deval’s campaign rhetoric about leadership and unity, it is ironic to see that when it comes to working with the legislature, his predecessor Mitt Romney was far more successful at not only reaching out across the aisle, but to actually getting things done.

Matt Margolis is co-author (with Mark Noonan) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at The Buffalo Bean. Follow Matt on Twitter.