Cassidy’s Image With GOP Voters Has Recovered From His Trump Conviction Vote. Is It Enough to Survive a 2026 Primary Challenge?

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Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy has improved his standing among Republicans in Louisiana since voting to convict Donald Trump following the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol in early 2021, but it’s unclear whether it’ll be enough to prevail in a renomination race next year that has already seen one challenger throw their hat in the ring.

The figures from Morning Consult latest senator approval rankings underline the pressure Cassidy’s under as he’s set to oversee a confirmation hearing for one of the president-elect’s most controversial Cabinet picks: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

Cassidy’s standing in Louisiana

Cassidy, now chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has a 69% approval rating among home-state Republicans, according to surveys collected in the fourth quarter of 2024. Though that’s a significant improvement from a low of 46% measured in the months that followed his Feb. 13 vote to convict Trump, Cassidy remains less popular with GOP voters in his deeply red state than Sen. John Kennedy or Gov. Jeff Landry, the other two statewide Republican officials we track on a daily basis.

Perhaps more importantly, just 27% of Republicans and 22% of self-described conservatives in the Bayou State) “strongly approve” of Cassidy’s job performance.  That “strongly approve” share highlights a weakness with the party’s base as he faces at least one competitive challenger, Louisiana state Treasurer John Fleming, a former U.S. representative and Trump administration official, in a closed Republican primary next year. 

It’s been a long road back to recovery for Cassidy, who has yet to announce that he’ll seek a third term next year but has been raising money like he plans to.

According to our latest surveys, Cassidy’s overall approval rating reached a four-year high in recent months. And the share who strongly approve of his job performance (27%) — though still short of where it was before his vote to convict Trump — is now the best it’s been since the impeachment fallout, after a generally steady uptick since the 12% nadir reached by September 2022.

Why Cassidy looks vulnerable to a primary

Ousting an incumbent in a primary is a hard task, and while Cassidy is weaker with the GOP base than fellow Louisiana Republicans Kennedy and Landry, his intraparty standing is largely in line with the average Republican senator up for re-election next year.

It’s widely expected that the senator most reviled by his own base, 82-year-old Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, will not seek re-election following his decision to step back from Senate Republican leadership (though he has yet to say so). 

Others with weaker backing from GOP voters, such as Sens. Susan Collins of Maine or Thom Tills of North Carolina, face unique political environments, with the southerner in particular likely to draw resources from Washington to help fend off such an attack as the GOP focuses on holding his and Collins’ seat.  

And even Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, the more vocally conservative among those who are weak among the party’s base, has one of the most pro-Trump voting records in the Senate, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis. That suggests the incoming president would be there to assist him should he face a threat from the right.

Cassidy, on the other hand, finds himself in a tougher spot.

He’s the only Republican up for re-election next year to have drawn a serious primary challenger so far, a rival who has already slammed him for, as he put it, turning his back on Trump. 

That makes Cassidy’s role in Kennedy’s HHS nomination all the more notable. A physician himself, Cassidy has not been shy about his concerns about the nominee’s stances on vaccines, and is being cast by the Washington press as a potential roadblock in a Senate where a nominee can only afford to lose three GOP votes if Democrats remain united.  

But as Republicans have learned again and again in recent years, those who cross Trump tend to pay at least some political price. Should Cassidy turn his back on the president-elect again, our data suggests it’s very likely that he’ll pay for it dearly.