Once again, Congress finds itself with a sub-par approval rating:
PRINCETON, NJ — Americans give Congress a 14% job approval rating as the new year begins, the lowest since September of last year and down from 18% in November and December. The disapproval rating for Congress is 81%.
These results are based on a Jan. 7-10 Gallup poll, conducted about a week after Congress and the president agreed on legislation that avoided the end-of-year “fiscal cliff,” in part by pushing the deadline for mandated federal budget sequestrations to March 1.
A Gallup poll earlier this month showed that Americans had a split reaction to the fiscal cliff agreement. But the same poll also showed that Americans gave low ratings to the way congressional leaders handled the negotiations, providing some explanation for the low rating of Congress in the current poll.
Additionally, three-quarters of Americans believe the “way politics works in Washington” is harmful to the United States, suggesting that Americans in general are very down on “business as usual” in the nation’s capital.
The lowest individual congressional job approval rating in Gallup’s history is 10%, measured in August of last year. The highest is 84%, measured in October 2001 after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
And it turns out that the disdain for Congress is largely bipartisan:
Republicans’ approval of the job Congress is doing dropped to 6% in January, from 14% in December. This eight-percentage-point decline fits with the finding that rank-and-file Republicans had the most negative reactions to the fiscal cliff agreement reached at the end of the year. But Democrats’ approval of Congress dropped by a similar degree — six points, to 15% from 21%. Independents’ approval rating was more constant at 17%, compared to 19% in December.
You think it’s bad now, just wait a few weeks for the debt ceiling talk to start up again.
