Single-Digit Approval for Congress? Not Exactly

Tag : welded cross

By Daniel Libit
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Matt Drudge blew the ram's horn early Tuesday morning:"Congressional Approval Rating Falls to Single Digits for FirstTime Ever." Within minutes, the conservative group Freedom's Watchwas blasting the news out to reporters. And by afternoon, Rep. AdamPutnam of Florida - the No. 3 Republican in the House - had weldedit into a cudgel with which to beat the Democrats.

"A new national survey out today puts congressional approval in thesingle digits, at 9 percent," Putnam told reporters gathered for apen-and-paper session. "At the rate we are going now, gas pricesand congressional approval should cross paths any day now."

The only catch: The news wasn't exactly the news.

Congressional approval ratings are low and getting lower, but theRasmussen Reports poll numbers that had Drudge breaking, Freedom'sWatch blasting and Putnam bludgeoning Tuesday weren't reallycongressional approval ratings, even if Rasmussen's own headlinedescribed them as such.

Rasmussen didn't ask respondents whether they approved ordisapproved of Congress; it asked respondents to rank Congress' jobperformance as excellent, good, fair or poor.

Just 2 percent rated the performance as excellent, and 7 percentrated it as good.
Add those up, and you get 9 percent.

But 36 percent of Rasmussen's respondents said they considerCongress' job performance to be fair. Is that approval ordisapproval?

Rasmussen CEO Scott Rasmussen said that's a fair question but onewithout a clear answer. His best guess: If you converted thethinking behind the answers into the binary results of most polls -approval or disapproval - then Congress' approval rating mightactually be as high as the mid-20s.

That's higher than the 13 percent approval rating Congress got inan "approve or disapprove" NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll lastmonth. But it's well below the 41 percent favorable rating Congressgot last month when The Pew Research Center for the People &the Press asked whether voters had a favorable or unfavorable viewof Congress.

Pew's Michael Dimock said asking respondents - as Rasmussen did -to say whether Congress is doing an excellent job or a good jobamounts to setting a higher bar.

"You have to actively think they are doing a good job, and not manypeople ever have that view of Congress," Dimock said.

Of course, fewer people today seem to have that view than in yearspast. When Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007, 53percent of Pew's respondents said they had a favorable view of theinstitution. That share has since dropped by 12 percentage points.

However you gauge it, Rasmussen says it's "impossible to overstatethe general level of cynicism people feel about Congress and thefunctioning of government."

Yes, but what does that mean?

Rasmussen is quick to note that polls such as his do not presupposethat respondents are paying close attention to the daily goings-onin the halls and hearing rooms of Capitol Hill. So maybe Congressis just a national metonym for "government" or "the world" or "thecrappy way things are going these days."
Rasmussen's poll delved a bit into America's anti-Congresssentiment. It found, for example, that likely voters think mostmembers of Congress are more interested in furthering their ownpolitical careers (72 percent) than in helping other people (14percent). It also found that 62 percent of likely voters thinkCongress hasn't passed any legislation this year that will"significantly improve life in America."

But Brookings Institution scholar Thomas Mann wonders how theywould know.

"The reality is, most Americans don't have a clue of what isactually being done or not being done by Congress," Mann said."They are sort of grasping at bits of information that they come onthat is general statements of general productivity."

Mann said that most Americans have failed to internalize theMadisonian Model, let alone its dilatory and argumentative nature.

"The other problem," Mann said, "is that most of the reporting onCongress, most of the stories people hear, are failures or examplesof scandal or corruption, of filibusters or failure to act onlegislation or campaign fundraising conflicts."

Dimock agreed: "Since most people don't think in a veryconcentrated way of specific activities of Congress, a lot of theirreactions to a question like that is,