Congress stinks worse than either Dems or Reps in Congress

Congress appears to be less than the sum of its parts. Current approval of the job Democrats are doing in Congress has a current trend estimate of 34.5%, while the estimated approval of Republicans in Congress is 28.8%. But overall approval of Congress has sunk to a miserable 22.6%, less than that of either party.
























Disapproval of Congressional Republicans remains a good deal higher than for Democrats due to a higher "don't know" rate in evaluating the Democrats. Disapproval of Republicans is at 64.8% while disapproval of Democrats is at 51.5%. Approval of both parties has been trending clearly down since January, while disapproval has trended up over the same time for both parties.

Amid the stories noting that approval of Congress is now below that of President Bush, it would be good to recognize that such simplistic comparisons are dangerous. Voters carry a generally negative view of the institution on Capitol Hill. Divided by parties, support is a bit higher.

Still, neither party can be comfortable with their current approval ratings. Republicans should note that they continue down despite enjoying a new Democratic majority to target for criticism. And Democrats should take little comfort in the small advantage they hold in approval. Democratic approval is trending down a bit faster than is Republican approval. Neither seems to have sold the public on their legislative agendas.

(Technical Note: The amount of polling on Congressional parties is more limited than one might wish. These trend estimates are based on all available polling, pooling the data to get better estimates than from any single poll. Individual polls, such as the new Harris Poll taken 7/6-9/07, produce somewhat different results, as seen by the spread of points around the lines in the figures. Harris, for example, found Democrats in Congress at 31% positive, 64% negative, while Republicans were at 21% positive and 76% negative. They found overall approval of Congress at 24% positive and 72% negative.)

Gloom, Doom and Opportunity

The latest round of polls has produced a batch of collectively bad numbers for President Bush, the Congress, the direction of the country and the Iraq war. They also show troubles for front runners. And opportunities for others.

President Bush returns from his European trip to find yet more new lows in individual polls but more importantly a new low and a continued sharp downturn in my estimated approval trend, which now stands at 31.0%, well below his previous sustained low of 34% in December-March. The current downturn started April 24 and continues unabated.

In the figure above I add the more sensitive estimator ("Ready Red") to the standard more conservative ("Old Blue") estimated trend. Since April the two estimates overlap almost perfectly (making Red seem to disappear under Blue in the graph.) This means the current change in approval is not a fluke-- regardless of how I estimate it, the trend is the same. That suggests that the current downturn continues at a steady rate, otherwise Red and Blue would disagree near the end.

Bush reversed a previous downward trend in February-May 2006 with a speech in support of immigration reform. Is it possible that his trip to Capitol Hill to meet with Republican Senators will do any good? Or has the time for him to rally a consensus on immigration now passed? I think it has, despite what was once a clear opportunity for him to gain support.

But gloom and doom doesn't stop with the President. Congress has taken some hard knocks in the last month as well. The two latest polls, from NBC/Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac University both peg approval of Congress at 23%. That comes on the heels of the LA Times/Bloomberg finding of 27% approval. The trend started down for Congress on April 15, but shows no sign of slowing. The trend estimate now stands at 27.5% approval. And Red thinks it might be lower still. I think Red is overreacting to the two polls at 23% and Blue is probably a better estimate. But gee-whiz either way.
























Democratic supporters have been quick to point out that opinion of Congress is not the same as approval of Democrats in Congress. I made that same point here and provide regular updates of the party evaluations here as well. But I think that argument is beginning to take on a bit of desperation and denial. There is good evidence that Republicans in Congress remain less approved of than Democrats, but there is no evidence that Democrats are gaining in approval from their recent actions. The polling here is thin, with approval of the parties only asked occasionally, so it is hard to track short term change. But the evidence we have is that Democrats are suffering declines in support relative to their January numbers. There is some evidence that this loss of support comes significantly from their base among liberals, who are unlikely to shift to support of Republicans. But an unpopular Congress has been the undoing of majority parties before and it seems Democrats should pay attention to the decline in approval of Congress, not whistle past the graveyard by pointing out that Republicans are worse off still.

Profound pessimism about the direction of the country continues at amazing levels. The trend estimate has sunk to only 20.8% saying right direction and 73.5% saying wrong track. Even if we discount for the artificially high levels of positive feeling following 9/11, the decline has been profound and sustained.
























With all this gloom, where is the politician with the skill to take advantage by offering some attractive alternative? Ronald Reagan with a happy vision of a shining city on a hill (with low taxes) or Bill Clinton saying the economy can be better. Who can capture the public's confidence that they can move the country in a new and better direction?

At the moment, the front-runners seem to be failing to seize that opportunity. Instead, the momentum in both parties has stalled for front-runners and turned to non-candidates.

The Republicans provide the strongest example of a party unhappy with its choices. Both Giuliani and McCain have suffered significant losses over the past 3 months. Now the excitement is behind the not-yet candidate Fred Thompson, who has gained sharply in the last month to near parity with McCain.



















The evidence is pretty good that Thompson's surge is not a fluke of a single poll or two, but is widespread across polls (though we could use some more to be sure!). This kind of surge for a new candidate is typical of what we see when there remain a significant number of partisans not happy with their choices and looking for any more attractive alternative to the front-runners. We saw this most famously in 1984 when Democrats unhappy with Mondale jumped on the Hart bandwagon once they saw the possibility of a credible alternative. At the moment, I think that is Thompson's greatest strength-- the hope of a better alternative. As Hart shows, it is not enough ultimately to be "not-Mondale", but at least for a while Fred Thompson may benefit significantly from being "the" alternative. Once in the race, can he take advantage of a discontented public? Does he have a story to tell about how to make America better?

I have to add that Mitt Romney is looking like the steady tortoise to the other hares. His trend has remained steadily up despite a number of mistakes earlier. He hasn't enjoyed even a moment of Thompson's "surge", but he's also escaped downturns. His current Iowa and New Hampshire polling also looks good. He has a very far ways to go to emerge in first place, but this far out you might like that long term positive trend.

The Democratic frontrunners haven't suffered the sharp declines that Giuliani and McCain have, but none are showing strong positive gains either. Clinton has fallen off just a few points recently, Obama seems stalled and Edwards has a very slight decline in support. So who do Democrats like more and more? Al Gore, the non-candidate.



















The Gore increase is no where close to that of Fred Thompson, but of the four possible nominees pictured above, he is the only one with steady gains throughout 2007. Given the low level of encouragement Gore has given to a possible candidacy (FAR less than Thompson) it is remarkable that he's moved up at all. And while the Thompson candidacy looks increasingly likely, a Gore campaign seems a remote possibility to me at least. Nonetheless, a non-trivial number of Democrats are looking longingly at him while passing up the easy opportunity to support Clinton or Obama or Edwards. Clearly they are looking for someone else who can take this opportunity to exploit the moment. Other evidence (here and here) makes Gore seem an unlikely white knight. In terms of partisan feelings, polarization and support in a general election, Gore looks a lot like Clinton-- well known and well liked among Democrats but not very popular among independents and actively despised among Republicans. But that isn't the point here. He is "someone else" at the moment within the Democratic party.

The front-runners have won substantial support within their parties and one may yet go on to win. But the current flatness or decline in their support trends argues strongly that none have sealed the deal with their primary voters. The widespread public disaffection with current leaders and conditions can be seen as a difficult environment to run in. But it is also the great opportunity to be seized by an able politician, one who can convince supporters that they have a vision of how to lead the country out of these bad times and into a new "morning in America". Based on the evidence here, I don't think any of the top six candidates has managed that yet. And that leaves them all vulnerable to someone who can. Fred Thompson is evidence that it is not yet too late for such candidates to emerge.

Congressional Approval at 10 Year Low?

The LATimes/Bloomberg poll, taken 6/7-10/07 finds approval of Congress at 27%, disapproval at 65%. That's a bit below my current trend estimate of 31.1%, but not a statistical outlier.

The headline and lede of the LA Times story are eye catching and have been quickly picked up:

Approval of Congress lowest in a decade

Only about a quarter of Americans approve of how it's doing its job, a poll shows; most see 'business as usual.'

By Noam N. Levey, Times Staff Writer
June 12, 2007

WASHINGTON — Fueled by disappointment at the pace of change since Democrats assumed the majority on Capitol Hill, public approval of Congress has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll.

Just 27% of Americans now approve of the way Congress is doing its job, the poll found, down from 36% in January, when Democrats assumed control of the House and the Senate.

My problem with this story is a common one. What it says is exactly true, but it ignores all polling not conducted by the LATimes and Bloomberg. This IS the lowest LA Times Poll reading of Congressional approval in a decade.

But what is not reported is that since January 2006, 42 of 146 national polls have found approval below 27%. That is 29% of the recent polls, so a congressional approval rating of 27% is by no means unique in the last decade. (If we include 27% approval then 56 of the last 146 have been this low or lower-- 38% of polls in the last year and a half.)

As the graph above shows, the LA Times polls have been generally consistent with the overall trend in Congressional approval since 1996, the earliest data I have for the LA Times polls. Their polls track well with the ups and downs of Congressional approval during this time. The "house effect", the average difference between the LA Times and the estimated trend is a moderate +2.6, meaning the LATimes approval is usually a bit above the overall trend estimate. More important the correlation of the LATimes poll and my trend estimate is a robust +.96, showing a very strong relationship between their polls and the trend.

This is just what we'd expect from an excellent poll, one that is conducted to high standards of polling methodology. That is a reputation the LA Times has justly earned. So I repeat that nothing here is evidence of a fault with the individual poll or the LATimes polling more generally. Quite the opposite.

Nor is the basic conclusion that approval of congress is going down in question. My trend estimate turned down starting April 15, and so far there is no evidence that the decline has slowed, let alone reversed.

But we come back to the need for comparison to put the poll in the context of what else we know about Congressional approval. The LA Times understandably wants to compare their polling over time and to gain value from their expensive polling. I'm all for that. But the story chooses to ignore, even for a sentence, the fact that there is a lot of polling that has been done on this subject, and that a significant amount of that polling does not support the "lowest in a decade" conclusion.

Contrast this treatment with that in USAToday last week when the USAToday/Gallup poll produced a result showing Obama with a slight lead over Clinton. USAToday wrote the story, discussed the meaning of the result, but also acknowledged in the story that there was other polling that did not show this sharp narrowing of the Obama-Clinton gap. I think the result was a very responsible treatment of the poll, still showing the value of conducting proprietary polls yet not writing as if other polls did not exist.

If we choose to pay attention to all the polling, as my trend estimate does, then we would conclude that approval of Congress remained within a half a point of 27% from June through October of 2006. This was the low point of the decade for the trend, and in fact since the Republicans gained control in November 1994. The Democratic Congress fell below 27% just before the 1994 election and again earlier in 1992. No other Congress has had a trend estimate this low since 1990 when my data begin.

Following the Democratic takeover of Congress in January, the approval trend rose to a high of 34.4% on April 15 and has since declined to 31.1% (which includes the current LATimes/Bloomberg data in the estimate.) Based on this, the gain was about 7 points, of which about 3 points have since been given up. Net, the current Congress is still about 4 points above the lows of 2006.

It is hard to sustain a claim that this is the lowest approval in a decade, unless one focuses only on the "in-house" polls. But it is very easy to see, with support from all those other polls, that approval has started to decline and that this poses risks for the Democrats in Congress.

The LATimes/Bloomberg poll does a good job showing that decline since January and explores the reasons for the decline, especially among liberal Democrats. All of that is excellent reporting and use of a poll, showing the strengths of original data collection and analysis.

I wish editors and reporters would acknowledge that they do not exist alone. When they ignore abundant outside polling, they undercut the very credibility of their own polling as well as serve their readers poorly by creating headlines which are only true within a very limited context. This story could have correctly informed readers AND exhibited the strengths of the LATimes polling operation if it had just stayed away from the "lowest in a decade" and focused instead on the dangers to Democrats of losing their base. Instead a headline is now being repeated which is quite misleading in light of all polling on Congress.

Who lost the Iraq war funding/veto fight?

The debate over the Iraq War funding bill-- the original one with withdrawal dates-- and the presidential veto of the bill posed a key political question: who wins when Congress confronts President, and in this particular case did President Bush or the Congress win the battle for public opinion?

Democrats in Congress were particularly wary about the charge of "undermining the troops", a charge the White House used repeatedly and one to which past Congresses have fallen victim. But the White House had to defend continuing a policy that most of the public sees as a failure. The Democrats bet that full funding but with a deadline would deflect the charge of undermining troops while moving towards their supporters goal of ending the war. The president bet that a public unhappy with the war would nevertheless reject a "surrender date" and could be persuaded that the surge of troops and Gen. Petraeus' "new strategy" should be given time to work.

The key period was Friday, April 20 through Tuesday, May 1. On April 20, President Bush gave a full defense of his new policy in a speech at East Grand Rapids MI, outlining what was new, what the hopes were and where some success could be seen, while admitting a long road ahead including increased casualties. On Monday, April 23, the President met with General Petraeus, and the same day House and Senate negotiators approved a common bill. The next day, April 24, President Bush gave a final warning to Congress in a South Lawn appearance that again outlined the arguments against a deadline and promised a veto. The House passed the bill on April 25th and the Senate on April 25th. The following Tuesday, May 1, President Bush delivered his promised veto.

So what happened to public opinion? The period from December through mid-April showed surprising stability in approval of President Bush. Despite the change in control of Congress, the new "surge" initiative in Iraq and the subsequent debates about the war, approval of the President remained quite stable, with only momentary wiggles that quickly returned to a stable support of around 34%.

That changed on April 24th. The trend estimate of presidential approval marks a sudden and sharp change on that date. Approval on the 24th was a shade over 34%, as it had been since December. But after that, approval started to decline steadily to the current estimate of 31.9%. That 2.1 point decline may sound small, but it is a significant shift in the trend estimate. Individual polls vary widely around this trend, far more than 2 points, but the mean moves much less, and as the graph above makes clear, hardly moved at all in the December-March period. The sharpness of the change point, and the stability of the subsequent decline, argues that this was a "real" point of change and not just random noise. I'm using the conservative "old blue" estimator here, which is hard to fool about changes in trend. It has taken a while to make up its mind (and mine) that this is a real shift in support, but it and I are now convinced.

That the change occurs in the midst of the war deadline/veto debate could be accidental. But it certainly is a believable moment for opinions to shift. A fundamental problem of inference with change point estimates such as this is that anything that happened around April 24th could also possibly be the cause of this shift in approval. Attorney General Gonzalez testified the previous week, for example, and the President supported him during this week as well. And John McCain announced his presidential campaign. And other stuff happened. All can claim the same coincidental relationship with approval's sudden downward turn. But I'd argue that the debate over the war that week tapped into the most salient divide in American politics this spring and is the more plausible explanation.

And I KNOW someone will say it was gas prices. It wasn't. Gas prices started rising the week of January 22, from $2.107/gal and rose each week but one until May 21 when the price hit $3.211/gal. As of June 4 the price was $3.132. So if it was the price of gas, rather than a trivial little war or a boring Washington political fight that drives approval, the President should have started sinking rapidly around the end of January. Excuse the rant, but the "gas prices" matter more than the war or anything else argument is just wrong. At most gas prices enter into approval along with other economic performance variables, but they do not deserve the primacy some attribute to them.

And so the President pressed his case for continuing the new war strategy and retaining both full funding and an open ended commitment in Iraq. He ultimately won that legislative fight, at least until new funding is required in September. But his approval rating has again started to sink, sapping further his already seriously depleted stock of public support.

And so the story might end here. Bush cast his veto and prevailed on funding, but has lost the public battle, at least temporarily. But what about approval of Congress? Did their approval ratings change about this same time? If so, how?

Estimating approval change requires data. Since April 24, there have been 19 polls of presidential approval, providing my trend estimator with enough evidence to reach a reasonably strong conclusion. For Congressional approval, there have been only 10 polls since April 24, so any conclusion rests on half the evidence. Normally I say that the "old blue" estimator likes to have about 12 polls to detect a durable change of trend, rather than just a random bump. But 10 is "around 12" enough that I'll take the risk this time in order to compare Congressional approval. So there is no cheating, I mark the same change date in the Congressional chart, April 24th, so we can see if the shifts match.
























Congress experienced a downturn in approval at almost the same time as did Bush. The high point for Congress is actually April 15. Since then the Congressional approval rating has fallen from 34.5% to 33.0%.

So how do we read this result? Neither Congress nor President won new or increased support from the public following the April debate over the war. As a single actor, it is easier to understand the President's situation. But with Congress, interpretation is confounded. Did the deadline cause supporters of the war to turn more negative to Congress, while opponents of the war either didn't increase support or were unhappy with a measure they thought too weak? Or were Republican voters happy with Congressional Republican support of the President, while Democrats were happy with Democratic opposition while independents turned a bit down?

It is surely the case that whatever Congress does it is easy to find something not to like. Partisans can be upset with the behavior of the other party in Congress, or even with members from their own party who fail to satisfy them. And arguably Congress suffers from simple controversy which gives the impression of a chaotic institution. All this means that a direct interpretation of WHY congressional approval has slipped is much more ambiguous than it is for the President. But we can say that the net effect, however it was divided by partisanship or anything else, was a decline in approval of Congress, reversing a small upward slope prior to the period around April 24.

However, consider the counter-factual. If approval of Congress had risen following April 24th, we'd have pretty strong evidence that Congress had benefited from the war funding debate. That did not happen. So at the least we have evidence that Bush certainly suffered and that most likely so did Congress. Why Congress suffered, and among which groups of the population, we can't say.

It would be nice to see if the parties in Congress gained or suffered differently. Alas, there are only 2 polls on Democratic performance, and only one for Republicans. The data are below, but no conclusion is possible based on this thin gruel.






















So who lost the Iraq funding/veto fight? Both President and Congress. The President continues to support a war that a majority of the public is unhappy with, even if they are somewhat divided on the solution. The Democrats in Congress benefit from professed public support for reduced forces and a pullout deadline, but have failed to produce legislation that garners them increases in public support. And Republicans in Congress have started to talk about September as the turning point beyond which their support for an unpopular war must find a new direction that will not imperil their electoral chances in the 2008 congressional elections.

So far neither side has found a route to increased public support.

Congressional vs Presidential Approval

The Associated Press analysis of their new poll (taken 5/7-9/07) used the lede:

People think the Democratic-led Congress is doing just as dreary a job as President Bush, following four months of bitter political standoffs and little progress on Iraq and a host of domestic issues.

And a paragraph later:

The survey found only 35 percent approve of how Congress is handling its job, down 5 percentage points in a month. That gives lawmakers the same bleak approval rating as Bush, who has been mired at about that level since last fall, including his dip to a record low for the AP-Ipsos poll of 32 percent last January.

The comparison of the two series is interesting. As the top figures shows, approval of Congress has generally been rising since the Democrats took control in January. The red line is the more sensitive trend estimate. It turns slightly down at the end, while the standard trend estimate continues to rise. The slight difference is not enough to convince me that there is any downturn at this point, despite the 5 point change in the AP poll over a month. As the graphic makes clear, there is lots of noise from poll to poll and the trend estimate is much more reliable than a poll to poll comparison. By contrast, the Presidential trend in the second figure has been quite flat since January, as both blue and red lines agree.

The level of approval of Congress was very low in late 2006 and remains well short of its high points in early 1998 and following 9/11 in 2002. (See the entire Congressional approval series since 1990 here.) But Congress is rarely loved. In the 17 years since 1990, Congressional approval has risen above 50% only twice-- rising just above 50% in early 1998 before dropping sharply after the impeachment of President Clinton late in 1998, and for a few months following 9/11. For the vast majority of the time since 1990, approval of Congress has been below 45% and below 40% for much of the time.

In 1995, following the Republicans capture of control, approval stood at just over 30% and did not break 40% until mid-1997. By contrast, Presidents routinely enjoy approval over 50% and are seen as in some trouble politically when their approval falls below 50%. President Bush's lengthy record below 40% is unusually low and long in comparison to previous presidents (though a number dip briefly to the 30s.)

In this light, while approvals of 35% apiece may be numerically equal, the political implications in light of historical polling are not the same. The most obvious difference is that in 2007 Congressional approval has been rising while that of the President has been stagnant. Democrats in Congress are not enjoying very high levels of approval, but they are doing considerably better than Republican members. (See the graph below.) While Democrats lead Republicans by 8 points on approval, Republican disapproval is a whopping 21 points higher than disapproval of the Democrats.





























There is a famous question in political science: "why do voters hate Congress but love their Congressman?" The simple answer is that the institution is a convenient whipping boy for the President but also for its own members. Many members (who often enjoy personal approval levels well above 50%) run for reelection by running against Congress as an institution. The result is approval ratings of the Congress that are poor in comparison to those of the President or of its individual members. Thus it becomes a dangerous thing to make direct comparisons of Presidential and Congressional approval. The two are quite different in their norms and dynamics. It would be better to look at Congressional approval in light of its own history, and the Republican victory in the 1994 elections and in government after 1995 provides an excellent point of comparison.

Approval of Parties in Congress

Updated: 11/6/07

























Approval of Republicans and Democrats in Congress trend.
(Click image once or twice for full resolution)

This post is updated in place. Come to this page for the latest tracking of the approval of congressional parties series. The index in the right column provides a direct link from the thumbnail to this page.

Typical question wordings:

ABC/WP: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way the Democrats/Republicans in Congress are doing their job?"

Pew: "Do you approve or disapprove of the job the Democratic/Republican leaders in Congress are doing?"

Harris: "How would you rate the job Democrats/Republicans in Congress are doing: excellent, pretty good, only fair, or poor?"

Congressional Approval

Updated 11/6/2007













Congressional approval since 1990. Click once or twice on the image for a full size view.

This post is updated in place so you can always come here for the latest data on Congressional approval. The index in the right column provides a direct link from the thumbnail to this page.

Congressional Approval Rises Only a Bit, Not a Lot

(Click the graphs once or twice for a full size view.)

A large number of media outlets and blogs ran this AP story on congressional approval. USAToday carried it this way:

AP Poll: Congress' approval hits high point

Public approval for Congress is at its highest level in a year as Democrats mark 100 days in power and step up their confrontation with President Bush over his handling of the Iraq War, the issue that overshadows all others.

. . .

The findings from an AP-Ipsos nationwide poll provide a snapshot of public sentiment in the days after the House and Senate triggered a series of veto threats from the president by passing separate bills that provide funds for the war, yet also call for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops.

Overall approval for Congress is 40%. The survey shows Bush's approval ratings remain in the mid-30 percent range ...

Which is all well and good except the AP poll is quite high compared to other recent polls of congressional approval, including AP's previous polls.

Of the last six polls the three most recent have come in above the previous trend estimate of 30.8%: Gallup has it at 33% (up from their previous 28%), AP at 40% and the Hotline at 37%. (Gallup has done two of the last six, so appears twice in the figure below.) The effect of these new polls is to revise my estimate of congressional approval up to 33.1%. But that is still a good deal shy of the AP result at 40% and a bit south of Hotline at 37%.




























With the addition of the three new polls, what had looked like a pretty steady downturn in congressional approval since January now looks pretty flat. For the Democrats, that's a definite improvement, but it certainly isn't the large upturn that the AP story (and its reverberations in the blogosphere) have taken it to be.

Notice in the figure above for the AP, that AP polling has generally tracked quite well with my trend estimate of congressional approval. Only this most recent poll is well above the trend, with all other AP polls hugging the blue line pretty tightly. So AP doesn't routinely produce high congressional approval numbers, just this time.

As always, one poll should not dominate our interpretation of political dynamics. In this case, it is possible that something dramatic has suddenly boosted congressional approval, and AP (with the Hotline a couple of days earlier) was just lucky enough to be in the field right after it happened. We can offer reasons why this may or may not be the case, though I prefer to just wait for more data to settle the case one way or another.

But what we can do is look at how the trend estimator varies, and how the polling varies around that trend. The plot below shows the blue trend line with a gray region representing the variation in that estimate from 30,000 "bootstrap" estimates. A bootstrap is a good way of estimating the variability of an estimator, especially as in this case when we don't wish to make strong assumptions about the statistical distribution of the variation. The gray region represents the range of estimates of congressional approval we might reasonably expect to see, given the randomness of the polls and of events that drive congressional approval. I've overlaid the actual poll results on top of this, in red, so it is clear how the estimator varies (the gray area) and how the polls vary (the red points) all around the estimated trend (the blue line).













So what do we see? Quite a bit of variation. Congressional approval is asked a good deal less often than is presidential approval, so with less data, the gray area is relatively wider than it is for presidential approval, especially early in the series when very few polls were available for the early 1990s. That's somewhat better now, and the range of the gray area is smaller now than at the beginning.

The other variation is the polls. They are distributed roughly equally above and below the trend line, and spread a little bit more than does the estimator's gray area.

And right at the end, you can see that the AP data point at 40% is at the extreme upper end of the range of plausible estimates.

This doesn't mean it is necessarily wrong, and it certainly doesn't mean the poll was flawed. ALL poll vary, and individual questions vary as well. It is perfectly normal to see this kind of range of variation, as looking at the spread of the other red data points clearly illustrates.

But before we write a headline about support for congress being at a new high point, it would be worth considering the evidence a bit more carefully. Judging from all the data we have in hand today, it would be rash to suggest that congressional approval is at 40%. A much more plausible estimate is where the trend estimator stands: 33.1%.

And that changes the interpretation of the story which plays on Congress at 40% vs Bush "in the mid-thirties". In fact, the best evidence as of tonight is that Bush is at 34.4% and Congress at 33.1%. Politically, that means neither has a clear edge in support over the other at the moment. (Caution: We should really look at approval of "the Democrats in Congress" if we want to directly address the question of which end of Pennsylvania Avenue enjoys more support in the coming struggle over the Iraq funding bill. And other questions too!)

One final caution is that the trend estimator is sensitive to the most recent polls. So these three new polls pulled the estimate up enough that what had previously looked like some modest decline since January now looks to be pretty flat. Is it? The graph below shows how sensitive the estimator is to each of the last 20 polls.






















The results show that for much of the last 20 estimates, the trend has been moving down. That has only been arrested as the last three polls have been added. So any conclusion about whether congressional approval is declining, steady, or increasing, rests on the thin reed of just three polls. Before we reach bold conclusions about the trajectory of public support for Congress, we should take some strong caution pills, and look at each new poll with some healthy skepticism until it gives us reason to trust it.

Congressional Job Approval, 1990-2007

(Click once or twice on the graphic for a full resolution view. It is big.)

The Democratic congress was swept into office due in part to the low approval of the old Republican congress. Initially approval of Congress improved but is now beginning to slide down a bit. With a confrontation on Iraq war funding looming, it is time to take a look at congressional approval.

As of polling completed 3/28/07, approval of Congress' handling of its job is at 30.8%, compared to 33.3% for President Bush. But Americans love to hate Congress even as we usually love our district's member of Congress. So how does the current 30.8% approval compare with the past?

Over the long haul, from 1990, current approval is rather low, though not at rock bottom. Congressional approval bottomed out in 1992 during the House banking scandal in which members were allowed to maintain negative balances in their accounts. While trivial in comparison to national policy issues, this scandal was a potent symbol of congressional privilege and members who had bounced checks were seriously affected in the 1992 elections. Of the 47 members who bounced over 100 checks, 55% (26) were gone from the 103rd Congress in 1993. Even among those with less than 100 bounces the turnover rate was 43% higher than among those with no check problems. (Data from Jacobson and Dimock, American Journal of Political Science, August 1994, pp 601-624.)

At the low point, my estimate of congressional approval fell to an almost unbelievable 17.5% on June 7, 1992.

Approval improved in 1993 and the first half of 1994, but stayed mostly in the 20s, breaking 30% briefly in early 1994. But this small improvement was followed by another substantial collapse during the fall campaign, to 23.8% by election day. By comparison, in 2006 congressional job approval was at 27.5% on election day.

Following the 1994 Republican revolution, approval improved significantly for the first half of 1995, topping 35% for the first time since early 1990. However, this improvement reached its limit as the Republican Congress confronted a Democratic president over budget decisions. With the confrontation and the eventual shutdown of the federal government, congressional job approval turned down to the high 20s again, bottoming out as the budget crisis was eventually resolved.

Congress then enjoyed two and a half years of improving public approval. Interestingly, this occurred despite a Democratic president whose popularity was also increasing during this time. Approval reached 50% in early 1998, and remained there until after the 1998 elections.

But impeachment was a mistake, at least from the perspective of approval of Congress, with approval dropping sharply by some 7 points during and immediately after the impeachment proceedings. Congress remained below 45% until once more improving to 50% approval during the 2000 election contest.

As with presidential approval, 9/11 produced a significant upturn in congressional approval, though this fell back to around 47% by the 2002 elections.

The start of the Iraq war saw a substantial increase in approval of President Bush, but there is no evidence of a similar rally for Congress in early 2003. From 2003 through the 2004 elections, approval slowly declined to about 40% before turning up slightly at the end of 2004.

That was the last good news for congressional approval under Republican control. The spring of 2005 saw a very sharp drop in approval, from 41% to 33% in the first half of the year, followed by a slower but steady decline until mid-2006. Approval finally bottomed out around April 2006, and held relatively steady through the election, ending at 27.5% on election day.

With the start of the 110th Congress in January, the Democrats enjoyed a modest, but nonetheless significant upturn in approval, to 32.6%.

Since then, the trend has been slowly but steadily downward, reaching the current 30.8% approval as of March 28th.
























Compared to 1994, the Democratic gain has been modest. Following the 1994 election, the new Republican Congress enjoyed an immediate upturn of over 7 points. The improvement peaked at 35.9% approval on March 30, 1995. The current Democratic gain was limited to 5.1%, and has since declined rather than continued to improve, as in early 1995.

And so we come to the first major confrontation of a president at 33.3% approval and a Congress at 30.8%. Given the results from 1995, a Congress should worry about confronting even an unpopular president. On the other hand, the budget battles of 1995 were quite different from the Iraq policy battles of 2007. President Bush seems to be betting that a cut off of funds, or even a temporary lapse of funding, will redound to his benefit. But recent polls have also found that more of the public support a withdrawal deadline than take the President's position. How this issue is shaped (starting a withdrawal versus cutting off the troops in the field) will have a significant effect on the outcome of the public debate. But it is a debate in which neither of the primary actors have a substantial advantage in public approval.

(I should note that ratings of "Democrats" or "Democratic leaders" in Congress are a bit above those of Congress as a whole, the variable of interest here. In the few polls that have asked about Democrats or Democratic leaders since the new Congress started, the approval ratings have mostly been in the low 40s, with one poll above 50. This is relevant to the debate over Iraq, and I will turn to this element of evaluation in a subsequent post.)