It’s the kind of news Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders almost certainly won’t like hearing, but fortunately, it’s true. Fewer than half of Arkansans approve of the job she’s doing during her first (and hopefully last) term in office. That’s according to the 25th annual Arkansas Poll released on Monday, according to the Arkansas Advocate.

The GOP governor received a mere 48 percent approval rating, the lowest rating for an Arkansas governor in the last two decades. And apparently, the ratings are part of a daughter/father duo because dear old Dad Mike Huckabee’s rating in 2003 was an embarrassing 47 percent. Former governors Mike Beebe, a Democrat, and Republican Asa Hutchinson were 66 percent in 2013 and 57 percent in 2021, respectively.

Sanders can breathe a little bit easier since she fared better than Republican U.S. Senators Tom Cotton (42 percent) and John Boozman (40 percent), and President Joe Biden, who polled at just 33 percent.

Janine Parry, a poll director and professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, began the poll in 1999, making this poll one of the oldest state-level polls in the U.S. according to a press release.

For this year’s polls, 801 phone interviews — both cell phone and landline — were conducted with randomly selected Arkansas from October 4-22. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

And the poll didn’t just seek approval ratings for public figures, there were also questions aimed at life in Arkansas, political party and ideology, current issues, the level of satisfaction citizens felt with public services, and willingness to seek help for mental health concerns.

The poll revealed that voters were seriously concerned about the economy, politics/politicians, and education. The number of those reporting concerns about the economy declined by three points from last year. However, it was still more than all of the other concerns combined, except when it came to the “Other/don’t know/refused to answer” category.

Well, when you consider that Sanders is doing hinky things like buying a very over-priced lectern and taking an expensive trip to Europe as Arkansans continue to struggle to make ends meet, it’s no wonder these folks continue to worry about the economy.

The poll asked the question “Do you feel AR is headed in the right or wrong direction?” saw a 6-point increase of people answering “right.” Parry, however, noted that the portion of respondents answering “wrong direction” has increased in recent years, to 1 in 3.

“A volatile economic and political environment is likely influencing some people’s general sense of well-being, in Arkansas and elsewhere,” she noted.

The Arkansas Advocate added that the “overwhelming majority” of those questioned reported they were “very satisfied or satisfied” with state and local services such as police protection, public libraries, and colleges and universities. There were only a couple of areas that received “unsatisfied or very unsatisfied” ratings that approached or exceeded 50 percent— K-12 public schools (47 percent) and the public welfare system (53 percent).

These two areas of highest dissatisfaction were also the same 20 years ago, “showing the durability of that dissatisfaction over time,” the press release stated.

Parry, who plans to retire from the university in 2024, estimates the poll has completed over 23,000 interviews, and typically, it contains more than 60 questions. This has led to an estimated 1.4 million data points concerning what Arkansans think about, and what they want from their public servants.

“Shepherding this project has never been dull,” Parry said. “Polling during the elections of 2010, 2012, and 2014 — in the thick of Arkansas’s rapid party flip — was stressful. But by maintaining gold standard methods and full transparency we’ve produced an enviable track record.”

Kudos to Parry for having a long and successful career conducting this poll.

The sad thing is that with Sanders as governor, transparency won’t be readily available to Arkansans as she moves to make it more difficult to obtain information through Arkansas’s own Freedom of Information Act, especially since she is discriminating more and more against the LGBTQ+ community.

And let’s not forget this:

Arkansas has the fifth-highest poverty rate, accompanied by the second-worst food insecurity in the country. A recent survey by Scholaroo found that Arkansas ranks 49th in the U.S. for quality of life and 50th in the nation for quality of health.

Really, the sooner this woman is out of office, the better off Arkansans will be.

If you’d like to see the 2023 Arkansas Poll Summary, you can find it here.