Regular readers of this blog will know that I like to keep track of the polls, and I post a lot of them on this blog. I think polls, while not always right, can give us a general idea of what is happening politically in the United States.
Every now and then, I like to check in with RealClearPolitics. They take all the recent polls and average them -- and in recent years their average has been more accurate that almost all of the individual polls.
The chart above shows the averages of all the most recent polls on job approval -- both of the president and of Congress. Not much has changed. The public is generally split on whether they approve of the job the president is doing -- but nearly everyone disapproves of the job Congress is doing. The president's approval rating is 30.8 points higher than that of Congress, and his disapproval is 25.6 points lower.
The charts below show the recent poll averages for the presidential race in both parties. Clinton has a 23.2 point lead among Democrats, and Trump has a 13.8 lead among Republicans.
I don't think the Congressional approval ratings mean what people think. Roughly half the people who disapprove, do it for the opposite reason that the other half do. That isn't true of the president's approval rating. All the low number means is that Americans suffer from what I have come to call "casual cynicism." And this is very bad for the country. I'm fine with hard won cynicism. But most Americans are just following the flow that came from Reagan's idea that government is always the problem. Also: Congressional approval was very high after 9/11. It hasn't changed much since 2006 -- except for a blip after Obama got into office, and that was still far below where it was when Congress brilliantly approved war with Iraq.
ReplyDelete