Laura Kelly's approval ratings are up. Here's how GOP's 'woke' battle is helping her.

The independent polling firm Morning Consult recently released its 2023 second-quarter approval ratings for American governors, and Kansas’ Laura Kelly did well, receiving the approval of 58% of Kansas registered voters polled against 34% disapproval and 8% with no opinion (with a 2% margin of error).

This makes her the 18th most popular governor in the nation, with the most popular being Gov. Phil Scott, of Vermont with 76% approval.

Kelly is the fourth most popular among governors who are in the opposite party of how the state voted in the 2020 presidential election and the second most popular among Democratic governors in Trump-voting states, behind only Kentucky Democrat Andy Beshear, who stands at 64% approval.

Now well into her fifth year as governor — after winning reelection in 2022 with 49.5% of the vote — here’s how Kelly compares to the two other two-term Kansas governors for whom there is polling data from their fifth year in office: She does not poll as high as Kathleen Sebelius’ off-the-charts approval numbers in 2007, in which Sebelius averaged 67% approval across 12 polls.

But Kelly is in the stratosphere compared to Sam Brownback’s 2015 numbers, when he averaged 22% approval against 67% disapproval. Yes, you have the math correct: That comes out to a minus-45 net approval rating.

We have reliable polling data going back 20 years, so we can place Kelly’s overall approval average in the context of the previous four Kansas governors: Approval average for entire term, listed from highest to lowest:

• Kathleen Sebelius (2003-2009): 60%.

• Laura Kelly (2019-2023): 53%.

• Mark Parkinson (2009-2011): 47%.

• Jeff Colyer (2018-2019): 37%.

• Sam Brownback (2011-2018): 32%.

One interesting aspect of Kelly’s approval numbers is that they’ve risen, on average, eight points since 2020. This latest poll showing 58% approval is tied for the second-highest number she’s received in the 33 polls published since she’s taken office. The poll was taken in the field from April through June, the exact time when she was battling the Kansas Legislature on bills about transgender people, taxes, abortion, and private school vouchers.

Kelly issued over 25 vetoes — with some being overridden and others not — and could not get the Legislature to send her a tax cut proposal that she could live with, even though the state is awash in money at the moment.

And yet, in a state where close to 50% of all voters are registered Republicans, her approval stayed high amidst fierce antipathy from the Republican-led Legislature.

How come? A straightforward answer is that Kelly has grown on many Kansans and they’ve come to trust her.

But another intriguing possibility may be in a recent Sienna College poll done nationally among Republican voters that found, as the New York Times reported, “Candidates were unlikely to win votes by narrowly focusing on rooting out left-wing ideology in schools, media, culture and business” and that “battling ‘woke’ may have less political potency than they think.”

In 2023, Kansas GOP legislative leaders started the year by announcing that one of their main tasks was fighting the “woke agenda,” which turned out to heavily emphasize the issue of transgender rights. Meanwhile, Kelly talked and talked about such “boring” issues as economic development, tax cuts and health care.

Judging by her approval numbers, Kansans appear to want her to keep right on focusing on those topics.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Laura Kelly's approval ratings are up as GOP's 'woke' battle helps her