Ted Cruz approval rating with Republican voters crashes 23% following Cancun trip

Ted Cruz’s approval rating had been plummeting since he objected to the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory

Ted Cruz has faced criticism since leaving storm-hit Texas to go to Cancun, Mexico with his family (Getty Images)

Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s approval rating among Republicans has plummeted since last week amid the controversy over his family trip to Cancun as the state grappled with power outages triggered by an unusual deep freeze, a new poll has found.

Around 53 per cent of Republicans approved of the way Mr Cruz is handling his job, a 23 percentage point decline from his ratings in January, according to a Yahoo/YouGov poll released on Wednesday. A month earlier, his approval rating stood at 76 per cent among Republicans, in a separate poll conducted by Morning Consult.

Around 24 per cent of voters approved of Mr Cruz as a senator while 49 per cent disapproved of his performance, the poll conducted between 20 February and 22 February found.

The survey with 1,500 participants was carried out across the US after his home state saw the worst winter storm in three decades with temperatures dipping to as low as 0F (-18C).

The senator drew a fierce backlash over the timing of his trip to Mexico amid the winter weather crisis in his home state.

Mr Cruz had flown to Cancun with his family while Texans were left to deal with electricity and water shortages. After the news about his vacation broke, the politician quickly abandoned the trip and later admitted that it had been a “mistake.” He added that he took the trip to appease his daughters.

But Mr Cruz had been losing support even before the Cancun controversy. The GOP leader had an 81 per cent approval rating among Republican supporters in a survey by Morning Consult conducted between 27 December and 5 January. The number dipped by 5 points to 76 per cent in January, after he objected to the decision of Congress to certify the victory of Joe Biden as US president.