A new poll about Congress pegs approval rating at nine percent

Posted By: Peter DavidPosted On:

That sounds pretty bad. Only nine percent of Americans believe in Congress.

I think that’s worth putting in perspective, though. It should be noted that, in various polls:

Thirty-four percent of Americans believe in ghosts. Forty eight believe in ESP. About one third believe in UFOs, and nineteen percent believe in the existence of witchcraft and spell casting.

Is there anything that people believe in LESS than Congress? Fortunately, yes. Only seven percent believe that Elvis is still alive (down from eleven percent in 2002). And five percent (all adults) swore that they saw a monster in their closet. There’s no available data as to how many believed they saw Elvis, or Congress, in their closet.

PAD

48 comments on “A new poll about Congress pegs approval rating at nine percent”

    1. “I don’t believe in Gita, / I don’t believe in yoga, / I don’t believe in kings, / I don’t believe in Elvis, / I don’t believe in Zimmerman, / I don’t believe in Beatles…”

      1. I don’t believe in trouble
        I don’t believe in pain
        I don’t believe there’s nothing left
        but running here again

        I don’t believe in promise
        I don’t believe in chance
        I don’t believe you can resist
        the things that make no sense

  2. Well, there’s little reason to believe Congress will be working for We the People any time soon. I bet their approval rating among Them the Corporations is a lot higher…

  3. I think the reason for the higher number of believers in the paranormal/extraterrestrial than Congress is that for the former, people can get glimpses or signs and interpret them as they want; for the latter, people see what does and doesn’t get done (almost no debt ceiling agreement, but they decided pizza is a vegetable in school lunches!) and base their opinion on *that* — and what they see ain’t good.

  5. I’ll open my closet door when I get home and let you know what I see. If all your readers do this, maybe we can find where Elvis, and all the monsters are hiding. (I include Congress in the latter.)

  6. I don’t believe in fairies.

    A more useful survey would rate voters’ confidence in their *own* representatives.

  7. What is meant by “believe in Congress”? Are you saying 93% of the people in the US don’t believe Congress actually exists?
    .
    I have to presume the question was more along the lines of “Do you believe Congress… does it’s job?” or “… is interested in the common good?’ or some such.

    1. Shhhh !….Don’t be so technical ! We don’t want the American people to find out that their lives are actually run by a giant alien supercomputer called Bob.

    2. There are two ways to “believe in” something. One is to have confidence in something and its value. The other is to believe something exists or holds some factual accuracy.

      It’s because of the former that I can say with all seriousness and no irony things like “I believe in fairy tales”.

  9. Don’t laugh but I believe in ghosts (encountered them a lot of times and I do “space clearing” for people living in haunted houses), in ESP and magic (because I got initiated and know how it works) and in UFO’s (though I’ve got no experience in that area).

  10. .
    So, basically, now that the Tea Party Revolution has gotten in to Congress, their approval ratings have dropped even lower than their 2010 numbers.
    .
    Good job, guys.

    1. I don’t know if 62 out of 435 people can take the credit or blame for such a terrible rating. I would also suspect that tea party types are not very well represented in the 9% of the poll respondents who think the current political crop is just peachy.

  13. This is nothing new. Congress’s approval numbers have been in the toilet for over 8 years now. They had lower approval numbers than Bush (Dubya) did during his presidency.

  14. Yes, the approval ratings for Congress are abysmal, but I’d peg the percentage of Congressmen that care to be no more than nine percent either. Your Congressional Representative and Senators don’t care what the approval numbers for Congress as a whole are. They care what their individual approval ratings are in their district (state for Senators) because those are the people whose votes they need. I would be absolutely flabbergasted if there is a single member of Congress that has an approval rating that low. The number has almost zero real influence in influencing the behavior/votes of Congress. It’s just a statistic to use as a talking point to win arguments.

    1. It’s always been that folks dislike Congress as a whole and think it’s doing a terrible job, but tend to be satisfied with their particular member.
      .
      All the children are above average, and all that.

  15. I think one of the nine percent who actually APPROVES of what Congress is doing was standing in front of me on the bus today, muttering and gestering to her imaginary friends.

  16. Why does this not surprise me ? O yeah, maybe because politicians promise one thing and do another. I’m a Dutchie, but if I was American, I wouldn’t believe that bathtub full of bloodsuckers either.

    1. Out of curiosity, what are the politicians like in Holland? Vastly different than politicians in America?

    1. Unless you really mean George III in which case: about 72% on average with 2% at the lowest rating.
      .
      www goodreads.com/book/show/1276526.George_III

    2. (first reply lost in the filters, it seems. SO this time sans link…)
      .
      Started at 50, hit 90 right after 9/11 and started an immediate steady decline down to around 28 interrupted only by a bumps when he invaded Iraq and Saddam was found.

    1. Boy wouldn’t that be nice. If Congress wants their approval numbers to increase, they should start REPEALING legislation, not creating more bureaucracy.

    1. Heh. I wonder what is the matter with the GOP. Are they the second most powerful gay group in the world after the Vatican?
      .
      Rick Perry probably should get less perfect hair, perhaps it would help kill the rumours that won’t go away.

  20. Hi Mr. David.

    Major off-topic: I was absolutely thrilled to see that my “letter” (read: e-mail message) made it into X-Factor 377! It turned out that someone else asked you head-on about The Isolationist in a recent Comic Book Resources: X-Position segment, so the publication delay beat me to the punch. (So that leaves at least one other directly-mentioned plot point or character being revisited soon, too…)

    I was also tremendously excited to see that X-Factor ships twice in December (a Christmas miracle!) and February (a …Valentine’s Day miracle?).

    Yeah, so, back to Congress.

  21. If we clap our hands to show that we believe in Congress, will they actually engage the population in meaningful dialogue and endeavor to lead the nation, rather than just eternally stalemating each other in an attempt to hold on to their own power?
    There’s a law of group dynamics that says any organization, if it exists for a long enough period of time, will ultimately abandon/forget whatever principals it was founded on and work primarily to uphold its own status quo. One looks at the Republicans and the Democrats and one has to think…

  22. …and no one has said congress is Anti-“gress”? That it is the opposite of “pro”-gress?

  23. I take this to mean does anybody believe that Congress is/will doing anything that is worthwhile to the citizens of this country.

    Personally, I say no. No one in DC understands what any actual American person who is not at the very top of the food chain deals with. They are completely out of touch.
    This is the point where I think the Occupy folks started to make.(although their execution needs help).
    The folks in DC (congress and the president and the courts) all are from the 1% and the gap between them and the 99% is so wide that they can’t conceive of what the rest of the folks deal with daily and as the electoral system stands now, they never will. That is why belief in Congress is so low and may never rise again.

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