50% Say Congress Doing A Poor Job

While members of Congress wrestle over reducing the historic-level federal budget deficit, the number of voters who give them positive marks for their job performance has tied the lowest level ever - for the second month in a row. Their poor marks, however, remain slightly less abysmal than they were last year.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just nine percent (9%) of Likely Voters think Congress is doing a good or excellent job.  Fifty percent (50%) rate congressional performance as poor.  (To see survey question wording, click here.)

From January 2007 through December 2010, with Democrats in control of both the House and Senate, the legislature earned good or excellent marks ranging from nine percent (9%) to 26%, although generally their rankings were in the low teens for most of this period. This trend continued through the early months of this year after Republicans regained control of the House, but the numbers have fallen over the past two months.

Since January 2007, poor marks for Congress have ranged from a low of 35% in early February 2007 to a high of 71% in February of last year. Since then, until the GOP takeover of the House, those giving Congress poor grades have generally fallen in the high 50s and low 60s. This past February, however, just 42% felt that way, but Congress' negatives have risen since then.

Voters are now for the first time evenly divided when it comes to Congress' primary role. Forty-four percent (44%) believe it's more important for Congress to pass good legislation than to block bad legislation from becoming law.  Just as many voters (44%) disagree and say the more important role is preventing bad laws. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided. Prior to this month in surveys back to last August, voters have given the edge to passing good legislation by several points.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 19-20, 2011 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.