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8% Think Congress is Doing a Good Job

There's one week left till midterm elections, and voters continue to express their displeasure with the current Congress.
 
 A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just eight percent (8%) of Likely U.S. Voters think Congress is doing a good or excellent job, unchanged from last month. Sixty-two percent (62%) rate Congress' performance as poor. (To see survey question wording, click here).
 
 The number giving Congress good or excellent marks has been in the single digits since April 2011. Negative findings reached a high of 75% in November 2013 during the rollout of the national health care law.

No wonder just 29% believe their representative in Congress deserves reelection.
 
 Eighty percent (80%) of voters feel most members of Congress listen to political party leaders more than the people they represent anyway. Only 10% think congressmen listen most to their constituents.

Sixty-three percent (63%) still believe that no matter how bad things are, Congress can always find a way to make them worse. But this is down five points from August and the lowest finding since September 2010. Nineteen percent (19%) disagree, but just as many (18%) are not sure.
 Fifty-five percent (55%) of voters think passing good legislation is a more important role for Congress than preventing bad legislation from becoming law, consistent with attitudes for the past couple years. Thirty-five percent (35%) rate stopping bad legislation as a more important job.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 23-24, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

 Sixty-nine percent (69%) of voters say Congress has not passed any legislation that will significantly improve life in America, also consistent with recent surveys. Only 11% think the opposite, while 20% are not sure. The majority
 of voters have felt Congress hasn't passed significant legislation since polling began on this question in 2006.

Men have the most negative opinion of Congress' performance, but women are more likely to say Congress listens to political party leaders rather than their own constituents.
 
 Generally speaking, the younger the voter, the more likely they are to have a positive opinion of Congress. They are also more likely to believe Congress has passed legislation to significantly improve life in America.
 
 Most voters across all party lines rate Congress poorly, but Republicans are less critical than Democrats and unaffiliated voters.
 
 Seventy percent (70%) of Democrats and 52% of voters not affiliated with either major political party believe passing good legislation is the most important role for Congress. Half (50%) of Republicans say it's more
 important for Congress to prevent bad legislation from becoming law.
 
 Republicans have a slight lead on the latest Generic Congressional Ballot.

Voters think most incumbents get reelected to Congress because election rules are rigged.

Just 28% of GOP voters believe Republicans in Congress have done a good job representing the party’s values. By contrast, nearly twice as many Democratic voters (53%) believe Democrats in Congress have done a good job representing their party’s values.

Fewer voters than ever think either major political party has a plan for the nation’s future, with most still convinced that neither party represents the American people.

Voters are growing less certain that a Republican-controlled Congress would actually repeal Obamcare.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 23-24, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Rasmussen Reports is a media company specializing in the collection, publication and distribution of public opinion information.

We conduct public opinion polls on a variety of topics to inform our audience on events in the news and other topics of interest. To ensure editorial control and independence, we pay for the polls ourselves and generate revenue through the sale of subscriptions, sponsorships, and advertising. Nightly polling on politics, business and lifestyle topics provides the content to update the Rasmussen Reports web site many times each day. If it's in the news, it's in our polls. Additionally, the data drives a daily update newsletter and various media outlets across the country.

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