Voters Give This Congress Failing Grades

No wonder voters want a new Congress ‘cause they sure don’t like the one they’ve got now.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 12% of Likely U.S. Voters now think Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Sixty-one percent (61%) rate their performance as poor. (To see survey question wording, click here.) 

That’s comparable to the findings last month when House and Senate members recessed to begin their last-minute campaigning for reelection.  This session of Congress has never won any popularity contests, but in May of last year, 23% gave it good or excellent marks and only 44% rated it poor. Things have been downhill since the first of the year, however.

Separate polling finds that 62% of voters think it would be better for the country if most congressional incumbents are defeated this November.

Democrats control both the House and Senate, so it’s no surprise that voters in that party are a little more charitable. Still, just 17% of Democratic voters give Congress good or excellent grades for its job performance. Seventy-nine percent (79%) of Republicans and 71% of voters not affiliated with either of the major parties say the national legislators have been doing a poor job.

The Political Class is a bit more positive.  While 80% of Mainstream voters think Congress is performing poorly, 38% of those in the Political Class grade their performance as good or excellent.

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This survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted October 24-25, 2010 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 byPulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Fifty-one percent (51%) of all voters view passing good legislation as a more important role for Congress than preventing bad legislation from becoming law. Forty percent (40%) say it’s more important for Congress to prevent bad laws from begin enacted, down from 46% in November 2009. ?