Lieberman even more unpopular than Dodd

The news yesterday out of Connecticut was the Chris Dodd is retiring instead of running for re-election.

What is more interesting is that there is one politician in that state even Dodd could beat: his seatmate, Joe Lieberman.

PPP (D) released some more data from its polling in Connecticut (522 RVs, 1/4-5, MoE +/- 4.3%), showing a precipitous drop in Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I) approval rating. It now stands at just 25 percent, with 67 percent disapproving. By comparison, that's lower than even Chris Dodd's showing at 29 percent approval.

Digging deeper, PPP finds that 81 percent of Democrats disapprove of Lieberman. Among Republicans, 39 percent approve and 48 percent disapprove; among indies the split is 32 / 61. Lieberman is up again in 2012

Dodd of course has gotten smacked with his push to allow AIG executives to collect multimillion dollar bonuses even as the Federal treasury was spending billions to clean up the mess they made, and also for the question of whether his Countrywide mortgage may have gotten a preferred rate because he was too cozy with the banks and the mortgage industry. But even with that baggage, Dodd is still more popular in his homestate than Joe of the 'Party of Joe.' And until the health care vote, Lieberman hadn't made a lot of waves. What has clearly made the difference was his waffling and watering down of health care legislation (note also that while he has net unfavorables with everyone, he's the closest to breaking even with Republicans.)