Dem
51
GOP
49
Morning Consult ran a poll at the end of last year to determine how popular each senator was. Here are the 11 most popular senators of the 117th Senate sorted on their approval rating.
| Senator | Approve | Disapprove | Net |
| John Barrasso (R-WY) | 66% | 25% | +41% |
| John Thune (R-SD) | 64% | 28% | +36% |
| Pat Leahy (D-VT) | 64% | 29% | +35% |
| Bernie Sanders (I-VT) | 64% | 34% | +30% |
| Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) | 63% | 26% | +37% |
| Mike Rounds (R-SD) | 63% | 27% | +36% |
| John Hoeven (R-ND) | 61% | 24% | +37% |
| Jon Tester (D-MT) | 60% | 30% | +30% |
| Brian Schatz (D-HI) | 58% | 28% | +30% |
| Jack Reed (D-RI) | 56% | 26% | +30% |
| John Kennedy (R-LA) | 56% | 31% | +25% |
It's interesting that senators from rural states score very high. In fact, the top eight are all from rural states. Only Schatz and Reed are from urban states.
Now the bad news. Here are the 10 senators with the highest disapproval ratings, sorted on same.
| Senator | Approve | Disapprove | Net |
| Mitch McConnell (R-KY | 29% | 64% | -35% |
| Joe Manchin (D-WV) | 40% | 53% | -13% |
| Ron Johnson (R-WI) | 42% | 53% | -11% |
| Susan Collins (R-ME) | 44% | 52% | -8% |
| Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) | 37% | 48% | -11% |
| Lisa Murkowski (R-AZ) | 45% | 48% | -3% |
| Lindsey Graham (R-SC) | 43% | 47% | -4% |
| Ted Cruz (R-TX) | 45% | 46% | -1% |
| Mike Crapo (R-ID) | 44% | 45% | -1% |
| Mitt Romney (R-UT) | 46% | 45% | +1% |
What's interesting here is that being really unpopular doesn't seem to stop someone from getting reelected. In 2022, Johnson, and Murkowski got reelected. In 2020, McConnell, Collins and Graham were all reelected by large margins. In all these cases, while the individual Republican senators were not popular, the Democratic Party was even less popular.
In a sense, these two tables are good news for the Democrats in 2024. Tester is +30. That's a very good starting place. He may be a Democrat, but Montanans like him personally. Manchin is moderately unpopular, but McConnell is even less popular and Johnson is almost as unpopular and they both won recently. (V)