Democrats just finished fighting a rancorous and divisive battle in the House and the Senate to pass their economic stimulus bill, which Barack Obama will sign today.
The fight to pass this bill was nasty, personal, and resulted ultimately in the Republican minority fracturing off, and vehemently opposing the bill. The Democrat-initiated stimulus bill garnered zero Republican votes in the House, and 3 votes in the Senate. Obviously, after all this partisan combat, Americans must be utterly sick of Congressional Democrats, their stubbornness, their refusal to be reasonable and not pack their stimulus bill with mindless unnecessary “pork,” as the Michelle Malkins and Rush Limbaughs of the world would have it. Right?
Not if you believe a recent Gallup poll, which concludes:
Congress’ approval ratings have been below 30% pretty consistently since October 2005. There have been a few exceptions to this, with ratings as high as 37% in early 2007 after the Democrats took party control of Congress after their victories in the November 2006 midterm elections, but those quickly disappeared. More recently, approval ratings of Congress had been about 20% or lower, including an all-time low rating of 14% in July 2008.
This month’s sharp increase largely reflects a more positive Democratic review of Congress. Since the previous measure from early January, Barack Obama has been inaugurated as president, and now Democrats have party control of both the legislative and the executive branches of the federal government.
Democrats’ average approval ratings of Congress more than doubled from January (18%) to February (43%). Independents show a smaller increase, from 17% to 29%, while Republicans are now less likely to approve of Congress than they were in January.
This uptick in support is evident not only among Democrats, but also among self-described Independents:
Moreover, Gallup writes:
Gallup has been measuring public approval of Congress on a monthly basis since January 2001. During that time, there have been only two month-to-month increases larger than the 12-point jump observed this month.
The largest single-month increase was a 42-point rally in congressional support after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, from 42% in a Sept. 7-10, 2001, poll to 84% in mid-October 2001. Gallup found similar increases in ratings of other government institutions around that time.
The next-largest jump of 14 points occurred after Democrats took party control of both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate in early 2007. There was also a 10-point increase from March to April 2003, which spanned the time of the beginning of the U.S. war with Iraq.
Imagine if the stimulus had passed more or less as progressive economists, basing their assessments on nonpartisan CBO figures, had wanted — and not in the eviscerated form in which it went through. Democrats would think even more highly of Congress, and I have no reason to believe Independents wouldn’t be on board with that uptick of support, glad that Congress had attempted to take decisive action to halt this terrible economic slump. That’s speculation on my part, but reasonable speculation, I think, based on these numbers.
I think Americans love it that Congress DID something. It wasn’t the partisanship that impressed Americans — it was the bill itself.
Not that Americans were all that impressed. A 43% approval rating is nothing to brag about, uptick or no uptick. Let’s see if it continues to climb.
The question is: If Democrats had insisted on pushing through a bigger bill — and Republicans had responded with a filabuster in the Senate — would Dems’ approval ratings be so high?
Comment by Ian — February 17, 2009 @ 6:28 pm
As Reuters points out, Congress always has low approval ratings; it’s recent low was low by historical standards; it’s current bump up is more a relative bump, not absolute. If Democrats had started from a much larger starting point, then negotiated down to a level well above the current amt. — with more spending and fewer tax cuts — I think Democrats would be happier when the economic commentators they trusted said that the stimulus amount was large enough to do the job — or at least not as bad as it could have been. Independents probably would have had a mixed response, depending on the reasons they decided they were happy with Congress.
Comment by Lee — February 18, 2009 @ 6:10 pm