New polling from Morning Consult shows that Senator Tillis is “still in negative territory” with North Carolina voters despite spending more than $700,000 on primary campaign ads, and is heading into an impeachment trial in a “familiar bind” – a “political Catch-22” with voters “souring on [his] job performance.” Tillis once again has the lowest approval rating (34%) of any Republican Senator up for reelection this year.

Previous Morning Consult analyses found that Tillis is being dragged down by an unpopular president and that Tillis has a “trust problem” with Republican voters after he “lost credibility with North Carolina Republicans.”

Elections analysts continue to label Tillis as one of the “most vulnerable senators up for reelection this year.” One analysis last week in The Hill cites Tillis’ flip flop on the emergency declaration and how he’s subsequently “fallen into lockstep with the president,” the damage caused by his expensive far-right primary, how Republican voters continue to have “reservations” about him, and his bottom-of-the-barrel approval ratings.

Others have moved his race to “Toss Up” because Tillis’ “personal favorability numbers are not good,” he has an “image problem” with voters, and he’s a self-serving Washington politician who stands for nothing and who “voters of all ideological stripes simply don’t trust.”

Morning Consult: Impeachment Trial Set to Put Vulnerable Senate Republicans in a Familiar Bind
By Eli Yokley
January 16, 2020

• Morning Consult’s latest Senator Approval Rankings, compiled from nearly 500,000 survey interviews conducted among registered voters in all 50 states during the final three months of 2019, found a small needle for the GOP to thread over the next several weeks. All five of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans head into the trial with voters in their states either souring on their job performance or with perceptions of the president threatening to pull them further down.

• Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) are contending with the latter problem. The president’s net approval rating is 17 points underwater in Colorado and 15 points in the red in Iowa. And while Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) saw a modest improvement in his net approval at the end of last year (plus 3 points), he’s still in negative territory…

Read the full analysis here.

See Also:

• Morning Consult: Things Aren’t Getting Better for 2020’s Most Vulnerable Senate Republicans

• Morning Consult: “Republican incumbents have seen their popularity decline, and they must contend with Trump’s lack of popularity“

• Morning Consult: Thom Tillis Loses Credibility With North Carolina Republicans