Republican candidates lead Democrats by eight points in the latest edition of the Generic Congressional Ballot, marking little change since the first of the year.

The new national telephone survey shows that 44% would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. Voter support for GOP congressional candidates is down one point from last week, while support for Democrats is down two points.

Republicans started the year ahead by nine points -- their largest lead in several years -- while support for Democrats fell to its lowest level in years. Republicans have held the lead on the Generic Ballot for several months now.

But in a three-way congressional contest with a Tea Party candidate on the ballot, the Democrat earns 36% support. The GOP candidate comes in second with 25% of the vote, and the Tea Party candidate picks up 17%. Twenty-three percent (23%) are undecided.

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The latest numbers highlight a remarkable change in the political environment during 2009. When President Obama was inaugurated, Democrats enjoyed a seven-point advantage on the Generic Ballot. Throughout the fall and winter of 2008, support for Democratic congressional candidates ranged from 42% to 47%. Republican support ranged from 37% to 41%. The two parties were very close on the Generic Ballot throughout the spring of 2009, but Republicans pulled ahead for good in late June.

In January, the number of Americans identifying themselves as Democrats fell further to the lowest level recorded in more than seven years of monthly tracking by Rasmussen Reports. However, the number of Republicans in the country also dropped by nearly two percentage points. The number of adults not affiliated with either major party is now up to 32.3%. That’s the highest number of unaffiliateds since the summer of 2007.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the GOP leads this week by a 46% to 20% margin. Support for Republicans among unaffiliateds held steady from the previous survey, but support for Democrats is down five points.

Most voters think the country would be better off if the majority of the current Congress wasn’t reelected this November, and their confidence in their own congressman continues to fall.

Voters are madder than ever at the current policies of the federal government. Seventy-five percent (75%) now say they are at least somewhat angry at the government’s current policies, up four points from late November and up nine points since September. Sixty percent (60%) think neither Republican political leaders nor Democratic political leaders have a good understanding of what is needed today

Still, voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on nine out of 10 key issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen Reports, including the economy, taxes and national security. Democrats have the edge in trust on the issue of government ethics and corruption.

While Democrats are suffering these days in the polls, Republican voters remain unhappy with the job their legislators are doing in Washington, D.C. Seventy-five percent (75%) of GOP voters believe Republicans in Congress have lost touch with the party's base throughout the nation over the past several years.

All voters feel more strongly than ever that Congress is performing poorly and that most of its members are in it for themselves.

As Scott Rasmussen notes in his new book, "In Search of Self-Governance," “If we ever found a Little League team behaving as poorly at the Republicans and Democrats or the congressmen or senators, we’d probably disband the team and go home. Heck, we might even disband the entire league and bulldoze the field.”

Populist is the least popular of five common political labels. It’s more fashionable to be viewed as a conservative, less so to be called a progressive, the label adopted by many liberals.

Forty-one percent (41%) of all voters prefer a budget deficit with tax cuts over a balanced budget that requires higher taxes. Separate polling also shows that 46% favor an across-the-board tax cut for all Americans.

A majority of Americans say the size of the federal budget deficit is due more to the unwillingness of politicians to cut government spending than to the reluctance of taxpayers to pay more in taxes.

In Election 2010 Senate races, Democratic incumbents are behind in Nevada, Colorado, Arkansas and Pennsylvania. Democratic incumbents are in potentially competitive races in California, Indiana and Wisconsin.

Republicans lead open-seat races in Delaware, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Ohio. A Democrat leads in Connecticut, and the race is close in Illinois. Republican incumbents lead in North Carolina and Iowa.

Rasmussen Reports has released recent polls on the 2010 governor's races in Ohio, Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and South Carolina.

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