Tennessee voters approve of Haslam

Republican Gov. Bill Haslam got high bipartisan approval among Tennessee’s active voters as he heads into the third year of his term, according to results from aMiddle Tennessee State University poll released Monday.

More than two in three voters or 68 percent said they approved of the way Haslam is handling his job as governor. Fourteen percent disapproved, and 16 percent didn’t know. The rest gave no answer.

In the context of a highly partisan national election, Haslam is nearly as popular among Democratic and independent voters as he is among voters from his own party.

“The poll found 75 percent approval among voters from the governor’s own party,” said Jason Reineke, associate director of the MTSU poll. “But a statistically identical 76 percent of independents also approve, as do a solid 54 percent majority of Democrats. Especially considering the partisan climate regarding national politics, these are very good numbers for the governor.”

The results show relatively less popularity for the governor among Tennessee’s African-American voters, only 47 percent of whom expressed approval of his job performance compared to 22 percent who expressed disapproval and 31 percent who said they weren’t sure. The governor’s numbers were statistically identical, though, across age, education, income and gender categories.

The governor’s high bipartisan support echoes that of his Democratic predecessor, former Gov. Phil Bredesen, according to Ken Blake, director of the MTSU poll.

“Both men have tended to govern from the political center while steering clear of hot-button social issues,” Blake said. “In Tennessee,that approach seems to pay substantial political dividends.”

Haslam’s popularity has been high in previous MTSU polls, although differences between the registered, likely voters examined in the current poll and the general population of Tennessee adults sampled in those previous polls make direct comparison difficult.

Conducted by telephone Oct. 16-21 by Issues and Answers Network Inc., the poll completed 650 interviews with randomly selected registered voters in Tennessee. The poll has an error margin of plus or minus four percentage points at the 95 percent level of confidence.

In order to obtain a representative sample of respondents, data were collected using a mix of landline and cellphones.