Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: For Tom Corbett, 42 is life, the universe, and nothing

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' PA-Gov: Here's an interesting turnaround: A couple of years ago, it seemed like John Kasich and Scott Walker were the Midwestern Republican freshman governors whose days were numbered, while Rick Snyder and Tom Corbett had evaded most of the scrutiny and were out of the crosshairs. Well, those positions have certainly been reversed over the last year or so, and if you needed to see some numbers to go with that slice of conventional wisdom, Public Policy Polling is out with some preliminary Pennsylvania data which backs that up.

Corbett's approvals are down to 38/52 overall; he was at 33/44 in PPP's last pre-election poll, so while he has better approvals, he's nevertheless further underwater this time. He also fares rather sketchily against potential Democratic opponents in hypothetical 2014 head-to-heads. The only one he outright loses to is ex-Gov. Ed Rendell, but that's largely because Rendell is the only Dem with name rec (47/43 favorables) that matches the incumbent's.

The more important number here may be 42, which is the threshold that Corbett never breaks against any of the other candidates'a bad place to be if undecideds are going to break in the Dems' direction. (A quick glance at the crosstabs confirms this. For instance, in the Corbett/Rob McCord matchup, 30 percent of the "not sures" are Democrats, but only 15 percent are Republicans.) Here's the full array of names:

' 40-46 vs. ex-Gov. Ed Rendell

' 42-42 vs. AG Kathleen Kane

' 41-37 vs. ex-Sec. of Environmental Protection John Hanger

' 41-35 vs. Treasurer Rob McCord

' 41-38 vs. Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter

' 41-34 vs. Rep. Allyson Schwartz

' 42-36 vs. ex-Rep. Joe Sestak

' 41-29 vs. businessman Tom Wolf

(Corbett trailed Generic Dem 47-37 in that early November poll; Generic D didn't get tested this time.)

The timing of this poll is particularly interesting, given Corbett's recent role initiating a lawsuit challenging the NCAA over its sanctions of Penn State's football program, in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal (something that we tore into on Friday). In terms of political merit, though, the lawsuit isn't weighing Corbett further down: PPP finds that 52 percent of the state's voters support the lawsuit, while 34 percent are opposed. That's because 62 percent of respondents think the sanctions against PSU were too strict, with 27 percent saying "about right" and 8 percent saying too lenient.

Of course, that's seen through the lens of athletic partisanship: Of the 49 percent of respondents who are Penn State fans, they support the lawsuit 63-23. The 51 percent who are non-Penn State fans oppose the lawsuit 45-41. (Political partisanship seems to weigh on how voters see the lawsuit as well, though: For instance, among Obama voters, the lawsuit has 15/65 approval, while among Romney voters, it has 42/33 approval.)

Nevertheless, the case doesn't seem to be a big difference maker for Corbett's fortunes: Despite the suit, his overall approval numbers for how he's handled the Penn State situation are still only 27 approve and 50 disapprove. And bear in mind that Corbett's numbers didn't start to tank with the Penn State scandal, but began to fall earlier than that, with the draconian round of education cuts that he pushed. The fact that his disapprovals have continued to get worse since November suggest that'even if the lawsuit, by itself, is a political plus for him'it doesn't look like litigation will be that much of a life preserver for him on the whole. (David Jarman)