Poll: 29 percent approve of Paul Ryan's job as speaker of the House
Less than a third of people in the U.S approve of the way Speaker Paul Ryan is handling his leadership role in Congress, according to a Pew Research Center survey released Monday.
The poll found that 29 percent approve of his job and a majority, 54 percent, disapprove of his job. Seventeen percent said they did not have an opinion.
About half of Republicans, 51 percent, and those who lean that way gave Ryan a positive job rating and 31 percent said they disapprove. Three-quarters of Democrats and those who lean that way overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance.
Ryan’s approval rating from the poll is lower than the approval ratings that were measured shortly after the terms for speaker began for John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich.
It’s unclear why the speaker’s approval rating is so slow, but it does come after House Republicans’ failure to pass legislation last month to repeal and replace Obamacare. Leadership failed to secure enough votes to get it passed.
The Freedom Caucus posed a major obstacle to the bill’s passage but the survey found many Americans have not heard of the conservative group. The poll found 42 percent have heard nothing at all about the Freedom Caucus, 39 percent said they’ve heard a little and 19 percent said they’ve heard a lot.
Forty-six percent said they are very or somewhat confident in the president’s ability to work effectively with Congress, down from the 60 percent who felt that way in December.
The poll surveyed 1,501 adults between April 5 and 11 with a 2.9 percentage point margin of error.