Newt Gingrich: The Most Disliked Politician in America
Newt Gingrich hasn’t just fallen in the GOP presidential race; he may be the most unpopular person in American politics right now.
Two new polls out this week show the former House speaker with an absolutely atrocious favorability rating.
Republican presidential candidate and former House speaker Newt Gingrich speaks during a campaign event Monday in South El Monte, Calif. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
A CNN/Opinion Research poll on Monday showed 63 percent of All Americans viewed Gingrich unfavorably, compared to just 25 percent who saw him in a positive light.
And today, a new CBS News/New York Times poll shows a similar split: 54 percent view Gingrich unfavorably, compared to 16 percent who say they feel positively predisposed towards him.
Those 38-point spreads between his favorable and unfavorable ratings are a new high for Gingrich in the 2012 campaign and tie his worst numbers from 1997, when he faced ethics troubles and a GOP revolt during his time as speaker of the House. (Fun fact: now-Sen. Al Franken joked in 1996 that Gingrich’s “favorable rating is only four points higher than the Unabomber.”)
And in fact, the numbers are worse than any national political figure The Fix could find in recent years — even, arguably, George W. Bush.
Sarah Palin, even at her most divisive, never saw her unfavorable rating rise above 60 percent in the CNN poll. And even when Republicans were demonizing Nancy Pelosi in the runup to the 2010 election, her unfavorable rating never climbed beyond the high-50s.