ST. LOUIS _ Three weeks after Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens' indictment in a sex scandal, Missourians are evenly split on whether he should resign, according to a new poll by a national firm.
The Gravis Marketing poll also found that Greitens' overall job performance rating is a dismal 34-50 percentage points approve/disapprove. That includes 36 percent who list their view as "strongly disapprove," fully twice the number who say they "strongly approve."
When asked whether Greitens should resign, 37 percent of poll respondents said yes, another 37 percent said no, and 25 percent were uncertain.
Greitens, a Republican, did better among Republican poll respondents than among Democrats and independents, but still drew significant fire from his own party. The poll found that 33 percent of Republican respondents disapprove of his job performance, including more than 19 percent who said they "strongly disapprove."
Almost 16 percent of Republicans say he should resign _ as some GOP legislators have called for.
Greitens was indicted by a St. Louis grand jury and arrested Feb. 22 on allegations that, during a consensual sexual encounter in 2015, before he was governor, he snapped a nonconsensual photo of his bound, blindfolded and partly undressed lover and threatened to publicize it if she exposed their relationship. He faces a charge of felony invasion of privacy.
The Greitens numbers come with a poll of 931 registered Missouri voters, taken between March 5 and March 7, focusing largely on the state's nationally watched U.S. Senate race. The respondents were chosen randomly and the survey was conducted using interactive voice responses and an online panel of cellphone users. The results were weighted by voting demographics. The poll has a sampling error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points.
