Polls & Research
Archive Search
A Third of Americans OK with Current Congress
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - Public support for the legislative branch remains low in the United States, according to a poll by Ipsos-Public Affairs released by the Associated Press. 33 per cent of respondents approve of the way Congress is handling its job, down one point in a month.
American voters renewed the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate in November 2006. On Jan. 4, the Democratic Party took control of the lower house for the first time since 1994, with 233 lawmakers. A victory for the Democratic candidates for the Senate in Montana and Virginia also gave the party a majority in the upper house.
On Mar. 9, Senate majority leader Harry Reid urged for a review of existing anti-terrorism guidelines, saying, "It is time to place meaningful checks on the Bush administration's ability to misuse the Patriot Act by overusing national security letters."
The Patriot Act—passed by Congress and signed into law by U.S. president George W. Bush in October 2001—enables the federal government to gather information on suspected terrorists through court-ordered wiretaps and searches.
Polling Data
Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way Congress is handling its job?
Mar. 2007 | Feb. 2007 | Jan. 2007 | |
Approve | 33% | 34% | 32% |
Disapprove | 63% | 58% | 62% |
Mixed feelings | 3% | 6% | 4% |
Source: Ipsos-Public Affairs / Associated Press
Methodology: Telephone interviews with 1,000 American adults, conducted from Mar. 5 to Mar. 7, 2007. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.