How do national trackers (Morning Consult, RealClearPolitics, FiveThirtyEight) currently rank all U.S. governors by approval?
Executive summary
Three major national trackers approach gubernatorial approval differently: Morning Consult publishes a rolling, state-by-state ranking that currently names Vermont’s Phil Scott the most popular governor and Rhode Island’s Daniel McKee among the least popular, while RealClearPolitics aggregates many polls but does not present a single, up-to-date nationwide governor ranking in the provided material; FiveThirtyEight’s governor-level rankings are not present in the supplied sources, so any claim about its current ordering cannot be confirmed from these documents [1] [2] [3].
1. Morning Consult: the definitive, published ordering available now
Morning Consult produces a quarterly U.S. Governor Approval tracker that reports each governor’s net approval — approve minus disapprove — measured among in-state registered voters and currently places Republican Phil Scott of Vermont at the top with roughly 75% approval, a position he’s held for many quarters, and identifies low-ranked governors such as Rhode Island’s Daniel McKee among the least popular in the nation [1] [4] [5] [6].
2. What Morning Consult’s numbers actually represent and their limits
Morning Consult’s net approval figures are drawn from thousands of state-level surveys aggregated by quarter with variable sample sizes and margins of error per state; the methodology emphasizes apples-to-apples comparisons across governors but Morning Consult sometimes publicly posts net ratings instead of full approve/disapprove splits and reserves detailed datasets for Pro clients, so independent replication of every governor’s raw numbers from the public summaries can be constrained [4] [7] [6].
3. RealClearPolitics: aggregator in principle, but no single governor ranking in the provided files
RealClearPolitics maintains a “Latest Polls” hub and aggregates many state and national polls, but the supplied RealClear documents do not include a consolidated, current ranking of all 50 governors by approval; therefore, RealClear’s typical value — an average across polls — is not available here as a definitive statewide governor ordering from these sources [3] [8].
4. FiveThirtyEight: absence of current governor rankings in the record provided
FiveThirtyEight is known for poll aggregation and approval ratings at the national level, but none of the supplied source materials include FiveThirtyEight’s governor-by-governor approval rankings or methodology for this question, so any authoritative statement about how FiveThirtyEight “currently ranks all U.S. governors” cannot be supported with the documents given (no source).
5. Cross-tracker comparison and practical takeaways
Based on the available reporting, Morning Consult is the only tracker among the three that offers a published, state-by-state governor approval ranking in the provided sources — showing clear leaders like Phil Scott (≈75% approval) and naming low-ranked governors such as Daniel McKee — while RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight either aggregate polls or produce averages but their governor-level rankings are not represented in the supplied material, so a direct, apples-to-apples comparison of all governors across the three trackers is not possible from these sources alone; readers should consult Morning Consult’s public tracker for the current full list and, if seeking aggregator perspectives, check RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight directly for any governor-specific averages or state poll compilations beyond the documents provided [1] [4] [2] [3].