This week Yellowhammer will be doing a three part series on polling numbers for Alabama Governor Robert Bentley that outline how his popularity has grown since taking office.

Today we will start by taking a look at the Governor’s overall favorability rating among all voters from his inauguration up until today. Later this week we will dig in to his favorables among key subgroups like conservatives, Republicans, and the Tea Party. And finally, we will see how Alabamians rate Bentley on specific issues including jobs, taxes, spending and social issues.

We will be pulling numbers from five surveys taken between the beginning of 2011 and the end of 2012. Each survey included a 600 sample of likely general election voters.

So to get get things rolling, here’s a quick breakdown of Governor Bentley’s overall favorability trend over the last two years.

After six months in office, he had boosted his favorables to 59%, which began a trend of his favorables increasing as Alabamians got to know him better.

By mid-2012, the Governor’s favorables had bumped up to 61% and closed out 2012 up to 63% with 17% viewing him unfavorably. While his unfavorables moved up slightly over his first two years as some partisanship set in, it’s noteworthy that almost all of those who had no opinion of Bentley at his inauguration moved to the “fav” column over that time period.

“This is a testament to the Governor’s handling of the challenges he faced over the first two years, and to his team’s execution,” one Montgomery insider told Yellowhammer.

When asked to get specific, the insider pointed directly to the governor’s handling of disaster recovery efforts, his refusal to set up the Obamacare-mandated healthcare exchange or to expand medicaid, and his Road to Recovery tour that has crisscrossed the state.

Stay tuned for more on this later in the week.