Polls: Congress and Bush Plunge to New Lows

By: Lowell
Published On: 5/19/2005 1:00:00 AM

Just in case you missed them, there were a slew of polls out today and yesterday.  First, the new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll  shows "disapproval of Congress's performance is higher than it has been since 1994, the year voters swept Democrats out of power on Capitol Hill."  That's right, the numbers now are 33% approval, 51% disapproval.  Not good.

Even more dramatically, after several months of Congress posturing over Terry Schiavo and now fighting over going "nuclear," the American people overwhelmingly (65%-17%) feel that "Congress doesn't share their priorities."  In fact, only 18% saying they have "a lot/quite a bit" of confidence in Congress, while just 42% feel that their representative deserves re-election.

Meanwhile, in a poll by the American Research Group, the country disapproves of President Bush's performance in office by a 43%-51% margin.  Bush gets even worse ratings - 37% approval/57% disapproval - on his handling of the economy. 

Finally, Harris Interactive has a 37% approval/61% disapproval rating for President Bush's handling of Iraq.  Only 26% of Americans are "confident" that "U.S. policies in Iraq will succeed," with just 39% saying that military action against Iraq was the right thing to do.

Hey, but you gotta hand it to the Republicans.  The American people may overwhelming disapprove of what they're doing, but like the Energizer Bunny they just keep going and going and going and going.  The question is, how long can the rest of us keep going?  Is it November 2006 yet?


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