INDReporter

Is Vitter going down in flames?

A new poll suggests the more voters see of David Vitter the less they like.

Women don’t like him. Independents don’t either. And even a sizeable number of Republicans say they’d vote for his Democratic rival in a runoff.

The Summer of Trump has been a Sh*tter for Vitter. The Republican U.S. senator and long-presumed frontrunner in the Louisiana governor race appears to be going down in flames as his election rivals and the super PACs that support them remind voters about that pesky 2007 prostitution scandal and other unsavory aspects of the one-time “family values” politician’s personal and professional life.

A new poll from Public Policy Polling underscores the tumble he’s taken over the last several months: only 34 percent of voters overall view him favorably compared to 51 percent who have a negative opinion of him, a favorability rating buttressed by 46-percent favorability among GOP voters; only 30 percent of independent voters, 28 percent of women and 24 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of Louisiana’s senior senator.

The PPP poll confirms a lot of earlier polling that suggests it will be runoff between Vitter and Democratic state Rep. John Bel Edwards, and the PPP poll has Edwards with a 50-38 percent lead over Vitter with Public Service Commissioner Scott Angelle (15 percent) and Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne (14), both Republicans, pulling up the rear.

What Vitter does have going for him is money — lots of it — and he and the super PAC that supports him have been spending that considerable cash on ads attacking his Republican rivals, the conventional wisdom being that if Vitter can eliminate Angelle and Dardenne and get in a runoff with Edwards then Vitter will end. This latest poll throws that conventional wisdom on its head.

Check it out here.