The key Democrats on Capitol Hill who will be working to reverse the country’s financial downturn are better known than Barack Obama’s new economic team but not better thought of by voters.

Just 30% of U.S. voters have a favorable opinion of Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, while 37% view him unfavorably. One-third of voters (33%) don’t know enough about Dodd to have an opinion of him one way or the other.

Of course, Dodd, who briefly ran for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, isn’t helped by news reports that he received preferential mortgages from Countrywide Financial and then later tried to engineer a federal bailout for the troubled lender when the housing bubble burst. Dodd also has been a big recipient of campaign contributions from the insurance industry and from the beleaguered mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Rep. Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, which oversees the banking and housing industries, has an even bigger favorability gap. Twenty-seven percent (27%) have a favorable view of the Massachusetts congressman, but 42% regard him unfavorably, including 31% who say that view is Very Unfavorable. A similar number (32%) are not sure what they think of Frank.

Frank has his own credibility problems with regards to the financial industry. He fought Bush Administration efforts to increase oversight over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of whom were large contributors to his campaigns.

Like Dodd, however, Frank has said there was no conflict of interest, and neither man has been subject to serious investigation over these ties.

Both legislators are doing better than the Democratic-led Congress, too. Just 12% of voters give Congress good or excellent job approval ratings, but they are the highest ratings for the legislature since mid-May. Fifty-five percent (55%) say Congress is doing a poor job. A majority of voters have given Congress a poor rating in every survey since mid-June.

Democrats are hopeful of turning these ratings around beginning in January with their new larger majorities in both the House and Senate and an aggressive agenda to deal with the nation’s economic problems.

On Tuesday, the Rasmussen Investor Index, which measures investor confidence on a daily basis, fell to another record low. The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, is now less than a point above its all-time low.

Three weeks after his November 4 victory, President-elect Barack Obama’s ratings have reached a new high in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index.

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Wall Street appears happy so far with Obama’s choice of Timothy Geithner to be secretary of the Treasury, but 53% of voters don’t know enough about him to have an opinion about him one way or the other. Thirty-one percent (31%) have a favorable opinion of the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York favorably, and 16% view him unfavorably.

Only one-quarter of U.S. adults (26%) are at least somewhat confident that U.S. policymakers even know what they are doing when it comes to addressing the nation’s current economic problems.

With a bailout for the beleaguered U.S. auto industry high on the congressional agenda, it’s interesting to note that 48% of voters don’t know enough about another new House committee chairman central to the discussions to have an opinion of him.

Twenty-three percent (23%) have a favorable view of Rep. Henry Waxman, the aggressively partisan California Democrat who is the new chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, while 29% regard him unfavorably. In an intra-party contest, he defeated the committee’s longtime chairman, Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, a strong advocate for the auto industry whose wife is a General Motors executive.

The new survey finds that Democrats are more likely than Republicans and unaffiliated voters to say they don’t know enough about their own congressional leaders to comment about them one way or the other.

As for the Democrats’ top leadership in the legislative chambers, 42% of voters had an unfavorable view of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a survey on Election Day, while 28% viewed him favorably. Over one-quarter of voters (27%) didn’t know who Reid was. Thirty percent (30%) of Democrats didn’t know him, compared to 23% of Republicans and 29% of unaffiliated voters.

Forty percent (40%) had a favorable view of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while 53% regarded the California Democrat unfavorably. Only seven percent (7%) didn’t know who she was.

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