ST. LOUIS — A poll to be released Thursday morning by local political scientists contains a lot of results, but few good ones for President Joe Biden.
Conducted in mid-February by Steven Rogers, Ken Warren and Gary Ritter of St. Louis University and YouGov, the poll asked 900 likely Missouri voters about a variety of subjects, including political issues, gun policy and education policy.
To the question of whether those polled “approve or disapprove” of the way Biden is doing his job, 50% said “strongly disapprove,” and another 12% said simply “disapprove.”
Biden’s “strongly approve” rating was 15%, while 21% said “approve.”
Congress fared better, but not by much. Its disapproval rating was 47% and another 21% said they “strongly disapproved.”
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The Missouri Legislature managed to come out of the poll with a stronger rating than either Biden or the U.S. Congress: 43% said they approved, with another 8% expressing strong approval.
Gov. Mike Parson managed to get half of the respondents, 50%, to say they either strongly approved or approved of his performance, while 44% picked one of the two disapproval choices.
The survey was conducted between Feb. 8 and Feb. 14. The margin of error for survey results for the full sample is 3.72%.
While most questions had a “not sure” response that was in the 4-10% range, the jury is still out on U.S. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Glendale.
A full 21% said they were still unsure of Schmitt’s performance. When it came to approval, 44% went for some level of approval and 35% disapproved to some extent.
The state’s other U.S. senator, Republican Josh Hawley, did not leave people undecided. Only 9% were unsure on their rating for Missouri’s senior senator and the rest of the respondents split almost evenly: 47% approving and 44% disapproving.
When it came to issues, 44% said the top priority for Missouri was the economy, followed by education at 18% and then health care at 17%.
On the issue of crime, 30% said the conditions in their community were “good”; “fair” garnered 31% and “poor” took 29%.
In a statement that said the U.S. is “on the right track and headed in a good direction,” 73% disagreed with that premise and another 12% were unsure.
Survey respondents had a better feeling about Missouri, with only 44% disagreeing with the statement that Missouri was going in the right direction.
In regard to the statement “parents of students should have the right to object to the instructional materials used in their child’s classroom,” 62% said they should have that right and only 26% opposed the notion.
And when it comes to guns, 79% said they favored background checks for anyone buying a gun, including at gun shows and through private sales.