By RasmussenReports.com
August 30, 2009
If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress,
just 25% of voters nationwide would keep the current batch
of legislators.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that
57% would vote to replace the entire Congress and start all
over again. Eighteen percent (18%) are not sure how they would
vote.
Overall, these numbers are little changed since last October.
When Congress was passing the unpopular $700-billion bailout
plan in the heat of a presidential campaign and a seeming financial
industry meltdown, 59% wanted to throw them all out. At that
time, just 17% wanted to keep them.
There has been a bit of a partisan shift since last fall.
With Democrats controlling both chambers of Congress, it's
not surprising to find that the number of Democrats who would
vote to keep the entire Congress has grown from 25% last fall
to 43% today. In fact, a modest plurality of Democrats would
now vote to keep the legislators. Last fall, a plurality of
Democrats were ready to throw them all out.
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While Democrats have become more supportive of the legislators,
voters not affiliated with either major party have moved in
the opposite direction. Today, 70% of those not affiliated
with either major party would vote to replace all of the elected
politicians in the House and Senate. That’s up from 62%
last year.
Republicans, not surprisingly, overwhelmingly support replacing
everyone in the Congress. Their views have not changed. But
Republican voters are disenchanted with their team as much
as the Congress itself: 69% of GOP Voters say Republicans in
Congress are out of touch with the party base.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) now believe that members of Congress
are overpaid. That’s up 10 percentage points from last
October. Just five percent (5%) think their Congress member
is paid too little. Thirty percent (30%) think the pay is about
right.
One reason for this attitude may be that most voters say they
understand the health care legislation better than Congress.
Just 22% think the legislature has a good understanding of
the issue. Three-out-of-four (74%) trust their own economic
judgment more than Congress’.
Just 14% give Congress good or excellent review for their
overall performance, while only 16% believe it’s Very
Likely that Congress will address the most important problems
facing our nation. Seventy-five percent (75%) say members of
Congress are more interested in their own careers than they
are in helping people. On the brighter side, just 37% say most
in Congress have extramarital affairs.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans believe that when members
of Congress meet with regulators and other government officials,
they do so to help their friends and hurt their political opponents.
Most believe that’s why politicians are able to solicit
contributions from business leaders. Most, however, say it’s
generally a good investment because political donors get more
than their money’s worth. Fifty-seven percent (57%) of
American adults say political donors get more than their money
back in terms of favors from members of Congress.
Despite these reviews, more than 90% of Congress routinely
gets reelected every two years. It’s a shock when any
incumbent loses. One explanation for this phenomenon frequently
heard in Washington, D.C. is that “people hate Congress
but love their own congressman.”
Voters have a different perspective, and 50% say 'rigged'
election rules explain high reelection rate for Congress.
When the Constitution was written, the nation’s founders
expected that there would be a 50% turnover in the House of
Representatives every election cycle. That was the experience
they witnessed in state legislatures at the time (and most
of the state legislatures offered just one-year terms). For
well over 100 years after the Constitution was adopted, the
turnover averaged in the 50% range as expected.
In the 20th century, turnover began to decline. As power and
prestige flowed to Washington during the New Deal era, fewer
and fewer members of Congress wanted to leave. In 1968, congressional
turnover fell to single digits for the first time ever, and
it has remained very low ever since.
This national telephone survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted
by Rasmussen Reports August 27-28, 2009. The margin of sampling
error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95%
level of confidence (see methodology).
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