Just over half of Pennsylvania voters believe Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) should leave the Democratic Party, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll.
The survey found 57% of Democrats, 55% of Republicans, and 46% of independents think Fetterman should switch parties.
“The Democrats would like to show him the door. The Republicans seem to be welcoming him in,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a release. “Thus is the political irony of Senator John Fetterman.”
The poll’s release comes after Fetterman said Wednesday he would leave the Democratic Party if it became “the anti-Israel party.”
“My long-term concern has been with the Democratic Party, as I am a member of that, is that our party is going to back away and turn their back to Israel,” Fetterman said. “If our party ever becomes, and just makes it official, the anti-Israel party, that’s when I would leave because that’s been a moral clarity for me.”
Fetterman also acknowledged he has been approached by Republicans about switching parties but declined to discuss the “private conversations.”
He pointed to what he sees as a growing anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party, citing House Minority Whip Katherine Clark’s (D-MA) decision to break with House Democratic leadership by backing legislation to end all U.S. defensive aid to Israel.
Despite the speculation, Fetterman has repeatedly dismissed the idea of becoming a Republican.
“I’d be a terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats,” he wrote in a May op-ed for the Washington Post.
Following recent Democratic primary victories by progressive candidates, Fetterman lamented what he called the rise of the “dirtbag left.”
“It’s just been the dancing days of the dirtbag left,” he said during an interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity. “The kind of people they are trying to run out of office, they are just good, traditional kinds of Democrats you would expect in New York City now.”
Beyond the Fetterman sentiment, the Quinnipiac poll also found 39% of Pennsylvania voters approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance, while 58% disapprove, largely unchanged from February, when 40% approved and 55% disapproved.
Fetterman says he’ll leave Democratic Party if it becomes ‘anti-Israel party’
On the economy, 39% approve of Trump’s handling of the issue, while 58% disapprove, compared to 39% approval and 56% disapproval in the university’s February survey.
The poll was conducted July 9-13 among 895 registered Pennsylvania voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.