CNN: Guess Who’s the Least Popular Dem Senate Leader — Ever?

Oh, let’s not always see the same hands …

Let’s face it — this isn’t exactly a mystery. Chuck Schumer went into the Schumer Shutdown as only marginally more popular than scabies overall, and about as popular as a teeth cleaning among Democrats specifically. I’m not kidding about either of those statements. Shutdown Chuck’s average favorability rating at RealClearPolling has him at a net -20.4. You have to go back a full year to find any poll that put that net negative in single digits. 

In comparison, here are other net favorability ratings that RCP is tracking:

• Donald Trump: -7.5
• J.D. Vance: -4.6
• Mike Johnson: -5.8
• Hakeem Jeffries: -6.2
• John Thune: -6.6

Here’s another interesting data point. For Johnson, Thune, and Jeffries, there are a significant number of people who just don’t have an opinion. For Thune, who is relatively new to his top spot in the Senate, the majority of respondents in the aggregate don’t see him favorably or unfavorably; his rating is 20.7/27.3, and Thune actually got a net +4 favorable in the most recent poll from RMG … at 24/20. 

Schumer, on the other hand, has an aggregate average of 27.2/47.6. His aggregate unfavorable rating is worse than everyone tracked by RCP except for Trump, whose favorability is much higher than Schumer’s (44.0/51.5). And Trump also has a recent net +4.0 positive from the Big Data Poll, for what that’s worth. 

All of this data precedes the collapse of the Schumer Shutdown, however. And so too, apparently, does the data Harry Enten used this morning from Pew Research. Their most recent data comes from a late-September poll, and it looked pretty grim for the Senate Minority Leader even without his stunt:

NEW: CNN statistician Harry Enten reveals that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is 4 points underwater among Democrats nationwide—marking the lowest net favorability for a Democratic Senate leader since 1985. Even worse for Schumer, his net favorability among New York… pic.twitter.com/UE5csvKDnu

— RedWave Press (@RedWave_Press) November 11, 2025

“I think the word of the day is terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, to quote another Charles, Charles Barkley, when it comes to Chuck Schumer. Look at this, least popular Dem Senate leader ever! I looked at all of the polls going all the way back since 1985. The one who was the lowest rating among Democrats is, in fact, Chuck Schumer. Look at this, he’s underwater with Democrats! His own party, he’s underwater! He’s at minus four points. That makes him the least popular guy for a Dem Senate leader going all the way back since the mid-1980s at least!” he answered, before going on to observe that Democratic voters are looking for a “fighter.”

Sidner followed up by asking who might be well-suited to challenge Schumer when he’s next up for reelection in 2028.

He replied:

You see this opening slide here and you see, of course, that Chuck Schumer is underwater with Democrats nationally. But of course the ultimate way to get Chuck Schumer out of office is to beat him in New York State. So how do New York State Democrats feel about Chuck Schumer? And take a look here, the net favorable among New York Democrats. Chuck Schumer is above water with the Democrats in his home state, but just by 16 points, look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez running way ahead. If she decides to challenge Chuck Schumer come 2028, she’s got a real leg up on the competition. I dare say at this point she would be the favorite to beat him, which would be something that would just blow my mind, even just a few years ago, given that Chuck Schumer, of course, is a New York born-and-bred type of guy.

Want to bet that those numbers haven’t improved much in the seven weeks since Pew took this survey? Schumer already had a 35/39 among Democrats in that poll, and the collapse of the Schumer Shutdown will only accelerate these trendlines from Pew:

This is not happening in a vacuum, either. The party wants more radical resistance, but when it fails, it wants to punish those who tried to deliver it. Semafor’s Dave Weigel and Burgess Everett warn that the election results a scant week ago have already been forgotten in the internecine war about to break open among Democrats:

The Democratic crackup that’s now underway in Washington is distracting the party from a series of brutal fights just ahead that will culminate in next year’s midterms.

Democrats have one month to figure out how they want to handle a Senate vote on expiring health care tax credits; then they’ll face another shutdown deadline on Jan. 30. After that comes a round of House and Senate primaries — often featuring agitator candidates eager for a change in leadership and a more aggressive approach to President Donald Trump.

With all the challenges ahead, Democrats are descending into bitter clashes whose fault lines were foreseeable from the moment the government shut down. The shutdown’s challenges to Senate Democratic unity, in particular, were immense: Several members of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s caucus didn’t want to start a fight over health care subsidies at all. Others only wanted to hold out for a couple of weeks.

Instead, they kept at it throughout the longest shutdown in US history. So when the bare minimum of eight Democratic senators split off, advancing a shutdown-ending deal that’s set to clear the Senate later Monday, the rest of the party erupted in fury, from coast to coast.

The crackup isn’t a distraction from these fights at all. It is a result of these fights, chosen poorly and on radical ground, when failure was easily predictable and leverage was non-existent. Pushing even more radical fights will result in greater failures. And Schumer is caught in the middle, attempting to appease the radicals who are attempting to seize control of the Democrat Party … for very undemocratic purposes. 

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

•  Who won the Schumer Shutdown? Hint: It wasn’t the man whose name it carries. 
• Andrew Malcolm and I break down the breakdown over the weekend. 
• We also talk about GOP messaging, and take a hard look at where SNAP funding goes. 

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!

Editor’s Note: After more than 40 days of screwing Americans, a few Dems have finally caved. The Schumer Shutdown was never about principle—just inflicting pain for political points. They own this.

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