Congress Is Still Universally Despised

There was a time in this country (which actually includes much of our history) when Congress was respected and approved of by the majority of the people. But that's been a while now -- and especially since the extremist Republicans took over the House in 2010, Congress has had a very low approval rating from the American people. In fact, in over two years Congress has never had the approval of a quarter (25%) of the general public. Currently, the approval rating for the U.S. Congress rests at the dismal approval rate of 13%.

Now you may think that this disapproval comes mainly from one or two political sectors of the country -- that one party may be so negative it is bringing the average approval percentage down. That would not be true though (as the chart above shows). The chart is from a new Gallup Poll (taken between March 7th and 10th of a national random sample of 1,022 adults -- with a margin of error of 4 points).

The truth is that Republicans, Independents, and Democrats all have an equally bad opinion of Congress. Before the 2010 election Democrats had a slightly better opinion of Congress than the other two groups did, but that election, which put the GOP in control of the House, caused Democratic approval to drop from 38% to below 20%. Currently all three political groups have a very low opinion of Congress. Here are the approval numbers:

Republicans...............15%
Democrats...............13%
Independents...............11%

If there's any saving grace for Congress, it's that their numbers didn't fall much after they failed to find a compromise to stop the sequester. But they may be because their numbers are already so low they really couldn't fall much lower.