Congress gets 83% disapproval rating in Gallup Poll, worst in over 30 years

Just 13% of Americans say they approve of the way Congress is doing its job while 83% disapprove, the worst disapproval rating for lawmakers in more than 30 years, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.

The previous record low approval rating was 14% in July 2008, a time of high prices for gasoline and a poor economy. For the year, Congress averaged about a 19% approval rating, tied with the averages in 2008 and 1979, another tough year for the economy.

Politically, independents and Republicans were down slightly in their view of Congress, while those saying they were Democrats had the biggest drop. From October to December, Democratic support fell from 38% to 16%. Republicans fell from 9% to 7% and independents from 16% to 13% during the same period.

The poll is based on telephone interviews with 1,019 adults from Friday to Sunday. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

But the institution of Congress should bounce back in the next few months, if the pattern of past changes in partisan power hold true, Gallup noted. There was a 10-point increase after the 1994 midterm election, when Republicans won control of both houses of Congress. There was a 14-point increase in congressional approval in the months after Democrats took over in 2007.

The economy is also pulling down general society.

A poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press shows that 72% said they were dissatisfied with national conditions and 89% rated national economic conditions as only fair or poor.

At least 60% said the nation is losing ground in dealing with the federal budget deficit, the cost of living, the financial condition of Social Security and the availability of well-paying jobs. Still, a majority of Americans, 55%, said that they believed that 2011 will be better than 2010, while 31% say the coming year will be worse. That optimism index is down from expectations for this year when two-thirds, 67%, said 2010 would be a better year than 2009.