Should The White House And Congress Be Controlled By The Same Party Or By Different Parties ?

The chart above shows what the public has thought about whether it is good or bad for the White House to be in the same hands (or different hands) as Congress. There has really been remarkably small movement in the last decade -- with a pretty strong plurality (37%) believing it doesn't make any difference whether the two are controlled by the same political party or by different parties. About 30% believe it is better for both to be controlled by the same party -- and about 28% think it is better for them to be controlled by different parties.

I think it may not have been too bad in the past for the presidency and Congress to be controlled by different parties -- because both parties were willing to compromise for the good of the country, and the different controls just served to temper what one party could do. But things are different now.

The Republican Party has become an extremist organization -- a party that refuses to compromise on anything, and puts its own ideology over what is good for this country. Control of the House by these extremist Republicans has just resulted in a gridlocked government that can't accomplish anything.

These charts (made from a recent Gallup Poll done between September 4th and 7th of a random national sample of 1,017 adults, with a margin of error of 4 points) do point out an interesting, but unsurprising thing. When a party controls the White House, their base believes it is better for Congress to also be controlled by them -- but when the other party controls the White House, they think Congress should be controlled by a different party.

During the Bush administration about 45% of the Republicans thought both should be controlled by the same party. But when Obama became president, that dropped to only 26% (a difference of about 19 points). The same was true of Democrats. During the Bush administration only 28% said it was good for one party to control both -- but after Obama became president, that figure rose to 42% (a change of 14 points).