Last week, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio got utterly shredded at a CNN town hall over his “pathetically weak” stance on gun safety. But it wasn’t just progressive activists or folks on Twitter who were furious with him. Rubio’s disastrous performance has now registered very, very clearly with a wide swath of Florida voters, according to Quinnipiac’s latest poll—which was conducted entirely after the CNN event.
Q: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Marco Rubio is handling his job as United States Senator?
Approve: 38
Disapprove: 53
As you can see in the graphic at the top of this post, which charts Rubio’s job approval ratings ever since he first joined the Senate in 2011, that -15 score is his all-time worst. And this wasn’t just some unlucky poll for Republicans: GOP Gov. Rick Scott simultaneously posted his best approval rating in the very same survey.
It’s rare that we can point to a single event and say it caused a politician’s poll numbers to shoot up or dive down, but this certainly seems to be one such case. The public is disgusted with the GOP’s deliberate inaction on gun safety, and if Republicans don’t want to wind up in the Dumpster like Rubio, they’d better act.