Michigan State University's State of the State Survey has been released, and the results show Gov. Rick Snyder's approval ratings have dropped sharply.
The survey shows Snyder received a "poor" job rating from 44% of the people who responded to the survey. That number is up 21% from the previous survey, and marks the worst rating of Snyder's 5 years in office. It's also the highest "poor" rating for a governor since Gov. Jennifer Granholm got 46% in the summer of 2010.
Other results of the State of the State showed that 57% of Michigan residents blame the Flint water crisis on either the governor, state government, or Darnell Earley, who Snyder appointed as Flint's emergency manager. Flint switched from Detroit's water supply to using water from the Flint River to save money, which led to the public health emergency after high levels of lead leached into the public's water supply.
“Clearly, the Flint water crisis has done a lot of damage to Gov. Snyder’s approval ratings among Michigan residents,” said Charles Ballard, director of the State of the State Survey and professor of economics at MSU. “His ratings deteriorated across the board. His ratings of ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ fell by 14 percentage points among Republicans, 14 points among Democrats and 20 points among Independents.”
The survey, which is released quarterly, was conducted from January 25 - March 26, 2016. People who responded to the survey named the "infrastructure of cities" as the state's biggest issue. 33% of people said infrastructure was the state's biggest problem, while jobs/economy was named by 24%, and education quality/financed by 13% of those surveyed.
The survey did have a few bright spots for the state's government. 78% of the people who responded to the survey said that Detroit is better off as a result of the city's 2013 bankruptcy. The survey also found that even while Snyder's approval ratings fell, trust in the state government didn't suffer a big drop.
The State of the State survey has been conducted since 1994 by the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research. IPPSR is a unit of MSU’s College of Social Science. You can get the complete results of the State of the State by reading the document that accompanies this story. You can also find out more by clicking the link to the right of this story.
