Fetterman’s Approach to Politics Is Working in Pennsylvania

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Democratic Sen. John Fetterman has taken heat from some on the left for meeting with President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, working with Republicans on the Laken Riley Act and staunchly defending Israel. 

But while some have suggested the first-term senator is en route to becoming Kyrsten Sinema 2.0 by alienating his base, that’s not nearly the case. At home in Pennsylvania, Morning Consult’s quarterly tracking of his approval rating shows he’s lost little support among Democrats and has widened his backing among voters in the middle and on the other side of the aisle.

Our latest figures show 48% of Pennsylvania voters approve and 37% disapprove of Fetterman’s job performance, marking an 8-percentage-point increase in his net approval rating (the share who approve minus the share who disapprove) since he took office in the first quarter of 2023.

While Fetterman’s approval rating has dropped a bit among Democrats over that same time period (from 76% to 72%), he has solid numbers among his own cohort and is now more popular than not among independents, which wasn’t the case before.

Most strikingly, Fetterman has nearly doubled his approval rating among Republicans (from 14% to 27%) as voters on the right have become far less likely to “strongly disapprove” of their Democratic senator.

According to our latest survey, just 33% of Pennsylvania Republicans “strongly disapprove” of Fetterman, down from 56% when he first took office, and just 15% of independents say the same, down from 29% at the start of his tenure.

The bottom line

If there are any warning signs for Fetterman in these trends, it’s the softening of approval among Democratic voters, 32% of whom strongly back his job performance, down 9 points since he first took office. But as our data suggested, and as the November results confirmed, the people responsible for charting Democrats’ course back to power should be more concerned by how the people outside of the tent view them.

That’s a convincing argument in favor of the political instincts of Fetterman, who was more popular last quarter among non-Democrats than either of the two other faces of the national Democratic brand we tracked in Pennsylvania: Erstwhile Sen. Bob Casey, who lost his re-election bid, or former President Joe Biden, whose numbers were dismal at the end of his term.

While there are hardly any Democratic voters who think that Fetterman is the answer to the big question ahead of them in the party’s 2028 presidential primary at this early stage, he — or at least, his approach to politics — shouldn’t be underestimated.