September 20, 2006 Poll Finds Most Americans Displeased With Congress By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER
With the midterm elections less than seven weeks away, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve reelection, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The disregard for Congress is the most intense it has been since 1994, when Republicans captured 52 seats to end four decades of Democratic control of the House and retook the Senate as well. It underlines the challenge the Republican Party faces in trying to hold onto power in the face of a surge in anti-incumbent sentiment.
By overwhelming margins, respondents said that members of Congress were too tied to special interests and that they did not understand the needs and problems of average Americans. Two-thirds said Congress had accomplished less than it typically does in a two-year session; most said they said they could not name a single major piece of legislation that cleared this Congress. Just 25 percent said they approved of the way Congress was doing its job.
The Times/CBS News poll also found that President Bush did not improve his own or his party's standing through the intense campaign of speeches he made and events he attended surrounding the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The speeches were at the heart of a Republican strategy to thrust national security to the forefront in the fall elections.
Mr. Bush's job approval rating was 37 percent, virtually unchanged from the last Times/CBS News poll, which was conducted in August. On the issue that has been a bulwark for Mr. Bush, 54 percent said they approve of the way he is managing the effort to combat terrorists, again unchanged from last month, though up from earlier this spring.
Republicans continue to hold a slight edge over Democrats on which party is better at dealing with terrorism, though that edge did not grow since last month despite Mr. Bush's flurry of speeches on national security, including one from the Oval Office on the night of the Sept. 11 anniversary.
But the Times/CBS News poll found a slight increase in the percentage of Americans who say they approve of the way Mr. Bush has handled the war in Iraq, to 36 percent from 30 percent. It also suggests that after bottoming out this spring, Mr. Bush's approval ratings on the economy and foreign policy have returned to their levels of about a year ago, both at 37 percent. The number of people who called terrorism the most important issue facing the country doubled to 14 percent in this poll from 7 percent in July; 22 percent named the war in Iraq as their top concern, little changed from July.
Across the board, the poll found marked disenchantment with Congress, highlighting the opportunity that Democrats see to make the argument for a change in leadership and to make the election a national referendum on the performance of the Republican-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush's tenure. In one striking finding, 77 percent of respondents - including 65 percent of Republicans - said that most members of Congress had not done a good enough job to deserve re-election and that it was time to give new people a chance. That is the highest number of voters who said it was "time for new people" since the fall of 1994.
"You get some people in there, and they're in there forever," said Jan Weaver, an Aberdeen, S.D., resident who described herself as a Republican voter, in a follow-up interview. "They're so out of touch with reality."
In the poll, 50 percent of voters said they would support a Democrat in the fall Congressional election, compared with 35 percent who said they would support a Republican. But the poll found that Democrats continued to struggle to offer a case for control of government to be turned over to them; only 38 percent of all respondents said the Democrats have a clear plan for how they would run the country, compared with 45 percent who said the Republicans had offered a clear plan.
Overall discontent with Congress or Washington does not necessarily signify how someone will vote when they see the familiar name of their member of Congress on the ballot. Thus, while 61 percent of respondents said they disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job, just 29 percent said they disapproved of the way their own "representative is handling his or her job."
For all the clear dissatisfaction with the 109th Congress, 39 percent of respondents said their own representative deserved re-election, compared with 48 percent who said it was time for someone new. What is more, it seems highly unlikely Democrats would experience a sweep similar to the one Republicans experienced in 1994. Most political analysts judge only about 40 House seats to be in play at the moment, compared with more than 100 seats at this point 12 years ago, in large part because redistricting has created more safe seats for both parties.
The New York Times/CBS News poll began last Friday, four days after the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, and two weeks after the White House began its offensive on security issues. A USA Today-Gallup Poll published on Tuesday reported that Mr. Bush's job approval rating had jumped to 44 percent from 39 percent. The questioning in that poll went through Sunday; The Times and CBS completed the questioning for this poll on Tuesday night. Presidential addresses often produce shifts in public opinion that tend to be transitory.
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Friday through Tuesday with 1,131 adults, of whom 1,007 said they were registered to vote, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The poll found indications that voters are paying unusually close attention to a midterm election: 43 percent said they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual. But with turnout promising to be a critical factor in many of the closer Senate and House races, there was no sign that either party had an edge in terms of voter enthusiasm.
Evidence of antipathy toward Congress in particular - and Washington in general - was abundant. Seventy-one percent of those polled said they did not trust the government to do what is right.
"If they had new blood, then the people that influence them - the lobbyists - would maybe not be so influential," Norma Scranton, a Republican from Thedford, Neb., said in a follow-up interview after participating in the poll. "They don't have our interest at heart, because they're influenced by these lobbyists. If they were new, maybe they would try to please their constituents a little better."
Another person who participated in the poll also expressed discontent with legislators. "There's so much bickering, so much disagreement, they just can't get together on certain issues," Lois Thurber, a Republican from Axtell, Neb., said in a follow-up interview. "They're kind of more worried about themselves than they are about the country."
Across the nation, incumbents and challengers are trying to accommodate this sour mood. Democrats are presenting themselves as a fresh start: "Isn't it time for a change?" asked an advertisement by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee directed at Senator Jim Talent, a Republican of Missouri.
And some Republican incumbents are seeking to distance themselves from fellow party members in Washington. "I've gone against the president and the Republican leadership when I think they are wrong," Representative Chris Shays, a Connecticut Republican locked in a tough re-election battle, said in a television advertisement being shown this week.
The Republicans continue to be seen as the better party to deal with terrorism, but by nowhere near the margin they once enjoyed over the Democrats: it is now 42 percent to 37 percent. When asked which party takes the threat of terrorism more seriously, 22 percent named Republicans, compared with 6 percent who said Democrats; 69 percent said they both did.
Voters said that Democrats were more likely to tell the truth than Republicans when talking about the war and Iraq and about the actual threat of terrorism. And 59 percent of respondents said that Mr. Bush was hiding something when he talked about how things were going in Iraq, while another 25 percent said he was mostly lying when talking about the war.
Not that Democrats should draw any solace from that: 71 percent of respondents said they believed Democrats in Congress were hiding something when they talked about how well things were going in Iraq - while 13 percent said they were mostly lying.
Robert Allen, a Democrat from Ventura, Calif., who also participated in the poll, said in a follow-up interview: "We're in a stalemate right now. They're not getting hardly anything done."
"It's time to elect a whole new bunch so they can do something," he said.
Marina Stefan, Megan Thee and Marjorie Connelly contributed reporting for this article.