Yesterday afternoon, Bill Cassidy blasted out the results of a poll which put him in the category of “virtually unbeatable” for re-election next year.

Voters sent me to Washington to fight for conservative solutions on issues like flood insurance and health care. Louisianans know I get stuff done. Good policy makes good politics. pic.twitter.com/br3xuu4vcz

— Bill Cassidy, M.D. (@BillCassidy) February 28, 2025

The poll is from Morning Consult, which routinely does approval polls on governors and senators the numbers of which tend to be…less than intuitive.

Morning Consult was the operation which consistently polled John Bel Edwards in the high 50’s on approval when he was governor, for example. In fact, they fairly often had Edwards’ approval higher than John Kennedy’s, which is laughable.

Even given that, from the poll’s writeup at Morning Consult’s site there is this from the “key takeaways” section…

Sen. Bill Cassidy has a 69% approval rating among home-state Republicans. It’s a significant improvement from a low after he voted to convict Donald Trump in early 2021, but still leaves him less popular with GOP voters in his deeply red state than Sen. John Kennedy or Gov. Jeff Landry.

Just 27% of Republicans and 22% of self-described conservatives in the Bayou State “strongly approve” of Cassidy’s job performance, highlighting a weakness with the party’s base as he faces at least one competitive challenger, Louisiana state Treasurer John Fleming, should he run next year.

To his credit, Cassidy’s intraparty standing is largely in line with the average Republican senator up for re-election next year. But they don’t carry the Trump-related baggage.

We asked around yesterday, as we’ve got lots of Louisiana Republican contacts, and we’re struggling to duplicate Morning Consult’s results. Not only didn’t we find anybody who agreed he’s doing a good job, we didn’t find anybody who believed that poll.

Essentially, Cassidy has a 27 percent approval rating. He has 42 percent of Republicans who don’t give a damn about him one way or another. And he has 31 percent of Republicans who want to punch him.

That’s if you actually give this poll any credence. Which we wouldn’t think is all that good an idea.

Cassidy is fired up about the fact he’s laid down $11 million in campaign swag. But here’s the thing: to win a closed GOP primary in Louisiana, a million bucks is plenty. Beyond that, it’s really overkill.

Cassidy is going to have to be the Trumpiest Trump Who Ever Trumped between now and that GOP primary. He can’t afford any noticeable departures from the president’s agenda, and he can’t even afford any pointed criticisms. Even if he’s utterly unremarkable between now and then we still wouldn’t expect that he could get to 50 percent in the party primary, and whoever is in the runoff with him would have to be the favorite no matter how much money Cassidy has.

That’s been our position on this race all along. We see zero reason to change it regardless of what results some Morning Consult poll spits out.

Also, a bit of news – Sen. Blake Miguez is expected to announce his candidacy in the race sometime next month. Miguez has been dealing with a family tragedy which set back the timetable, but we expect to see a whole lot of activity coming out of his camp soon.

And with John Fleming already in the race and periodically hammering Cassidy, there will be some downward pressure on those poll results, such as they are, fairly soon.