Poll: Huether Support Weaker Among Independents

The latest poll from Nielson Brothers includes some diverting crosstabs breaking down Sioux Falls mayor Mike Huether's support along party lines.

Mayor Huether, a purported Democrat, has nearly as much approval among Republicans as Democrats. The intensity of that approval is slightly less, just as intensity of GOP disapproval of Mayor Huether is slightly greater.

Oddly, Sioux Falls Independents are the outlier here. A majority of those polled disapprove of the mayor's performance. Usually, Indies are in the middle. Consider President Barack Obama's latest Gallup numbers: last week, 79% of Democrats approved of his performance, 39% of Independents, and 11% of Republicans.

Nielson Brothers also take a swing at breaking down mayoral approval by ideology rather than party label (Hey, no Occupy Wall Streeters? Wait, I keep forgetting, we are the 99%.)

Nielson Brothers note that out of 570 respondents to the mayoral approval question, 12% identified themselves as Tea Party, 34% conservative, 34% moderate, and 20% liberal. (Yay, libs! Who surrounds whom, Teabaggers?) Those numbers may be too small to make the differences in the above chart matter much. But it seems noteworthy that a big-money Democrat can find more support among Tea Partiers than among conservatives. Mayor gets more love from the non-conservative side of the spectrum, but he sparks a little more disgruntlement among Sioux Falls liberals than Sioux Falls moderates.