2010 Midterms: Zogby Dipstick

I just visited the Zogby poling sight that I joined back in 2007 as part of my tracking of the 2008 elections. It's still early for congressional race poles specific to states and/or districts, but there was a very interesting congress overall approval rating pole from July 28, 2010 that really seems to support my general sense of things. Clearly Americans are unhappy with Congress. And they are happy to blame it as an institution as the first graph I created from the pole results illustrates.

Not even a quarter of those poled held a positive disposition toward the United States Congress. And who can blame them? One side plays the constant "No, no, no" card and the other flounders for leaders with balls! Given the mandate for change that the general election of 2008 represented, the bickering and cow-towing to corporate interests on the part of the congress is discouraging in the least and disheartening at best. If you're going to be disliked, why would you chose to be disliked for doing nothing as opposed to being held accountable for the things you've done? I, too, don't get it when it comes to Congress in general. I mean, why the hell would anyone go through the hoops to be elected and then sit on their hands and be afraid to be accused of doing something?

So what's the good news?

American's appear to dislike Democrats less that Republicans. A total of 37% of those poled had positive feelings toward Democrats compared to 25% who approved of Republicans. That's a 12 percent differential and that's significant.

In addition, the degree to which Americans dislike Republican members of Congress over their Democratic colleagues was astounding. While half of those poled somewhat disapproved of Democrats, half of them strongly disapproved of Republicans.

This is a really affirming statistic. Americans everywhere are unhappy. The economy sucks. The future is a far more challenging enterprise than it has previously been viewed. And who are you going to blame?--the government, of course. Yet, given these results, it would seem that being a Republican incumbent is a far greater liability than being a Democrat. All the Faux News hype and propaganda aside, the people still get to vote.