Voters Rate Congressional Job Performance as Poor

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Washington DC, nothing that Congress has done in the past three months has improved their standing with voters, most of whom continue to rate congressional job performance as poor.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 17% of Likely U.S. Voters rate the way Congress is doing its job as good or excellent. Fifty-four percent (54%) think Congress is doing a poor job. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Those numbers are worse than in April, when 21% gave Congress excellent or good ratings. Historically, positive ratings for Congress have only reached 25% once (in February 2017) in regular surveying by Rasmussen Reports since 2007. Poor findings routinely ran in the 60s and 70s from 2011 through 2014.

Just 29% of voters think Congress is likely to seriously address the most important problems facing our nation. Sixty-eight percent (66%) consider that unlikely. These findings includes only seven percent (7%) who feel Congress is Very Likely to tackle the big issues and 33% who say it’s Not At All Likely to do so. Those numbers haven’t changed much since October 2019.

The survey of 930 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on July 25-26, 2021 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

With Democrats now controlling both houses of Congress, most Democratic voters have a higher opinion of congressional performance than do other voters. Twenty-seven percent (27%) of Democrats rate the way Congress is doing its job as good or excellent, compared to just 12% of Republicans and nine percent (9%) of voters not affiliated with either major party. Only 39% of Democrats say Congress is doing a poor job, compared to 66% of Republicans and 60% of unaffiliated voters.

Democrats (44%) are also more than twice as likely as Republicans (20%) or unaffiliated voters (19%) to believe it’s likely that Congress will seriously address the most important problems facing our nation.

Voters under 40 give Congress better ratings than do older voters, with more than 60% of voters 40 and older saying Congress is doing a poor job.

Government employees (28%) are much more likely than private-sector workers (18%) to say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Sixty-five percent (65%) of retirees give Congress a poor performance rating.

Black voters have a higher opinion of Congress than do whites or other minority voters.

President Joe Biden’s strongest supporters have a much higher opinion of how Congress is doing its job than do others. Among voters who Strongly Approve of Biden’s job performance as president, 38% give Congress an excellent or good rating. By contrast, among voters who Strongly Disapprove of Biden’s performance, only two percent (2%) rate Congress excellent or good, and 84% say Congress is doing a poor job.