Poll: Public Dissatisfied With War, Country’s Direction And Democratic Congress
June 5th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
A new poll has some more bad news for the administration — but it has particularly bad news for the Democratic Congress. In fact, the poll spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e:
Growing frustration with the performance of the Democratic Congress, combined with widespread public pessimism over President Bush’s temporary troop buildup in Iraq, has left satisfaction with the overall direction of the country at its lowest point in more than a decade, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Almost six in 10 Americans said they do not think the additional troops sent to Iraq since the beginning of the year will help restore civil order there, and 53 percent — a new high in Post-ABC News polls — said they do not believe that the war has contributed to the long-term security of the United States.
Bush continues to have basement-level poll ratings — but the new twist is that the Democrats are facing deteriorating ratings in Congress. And if you look at the numbers, some of the soured voters are Democrats. Danger: if Democrats either don’t vote or don’t aggressively work for candidates of their own party in 2008, the Democratic Party’s hold on Congress could be in danger or at least greatly weakened:
Disapproval of Bush’s performance in office remains high, but the poll highlighted growing disapproval of the new Democratic majority in Congress. Just 39 percent said they approve of the job Congress is doing, down from 44 percent in April, when the new Congress was about 100 days into its term. More significant, approval of congressional Democrats dropped 10 percentage points over that same period, from 54 percent to 44 percent.
Much of that drop was fueled by lower approval ratings of the Democrats in Congress among strong opponents of the war, independents and liberal Democrats. While independents were evenly split on the Democrats in Congress in April (49 percent approved, 48 percent disapproved), now 37 percent said they approved and 54 percent disapproved. Among liberal Democrats, approval of congressional Democrats dropped 18 points.
Bush’s overall job-approval rating stands at 35 percent, unchanged from April.
The big question is whether disappointed members of the Democratic Party who feel the Congress has not acted swiftly and/or strongly enough decide to sit on their hands in 2008. If so, the GOP will pick up seats. Democrats have cast protest votes (Ralph Nader) or not voted before and the beneficiary has been the GOP. Is it heading in that direction again?
Most likely: it’s still a long way to the election and George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have a way of unifying Democrats — even disgruntled ones.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2007 at 4:42 am and is filed under Democrats, Republicans, Independent Voters, Polls, 2008 Elections, Congress, Politics. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
