By Pam Martens: August 22, 2012

Gallup Polls Showing Approval Rating of Congress, January 2011 to Present

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll conducted August 16 – 20 finds that just 12 percent of registered voters approve of the job Congress is doing.  The findings tied with the all time low previously set in October 2008.

But the NBC/WSJ poll may even be too generous to Congress.  According to a Gallup poll conducted between February 2 – 5, 2012 and again on August 9 – 12, 2012, just 10 percent of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing.  (The Gallup poll was conducted among a random sampling of adults, not just registered voters as in the NBC/WSJ poll.)

The 10 percent approval rating is the lowest number for Congressional approval in the 38 years Gallup has been conducting the poll.

The poll findings are compatible with the widespread view by Americans that members of Congress are dependent on corporate money for their campaigns and, therefore, attend to corporate business while in office, to the detriment of the average American.

The outstanding work of ThinkProgress.org in a series of investigative articles in 2011, exposing that the front group, ALEC, was effectively writing legislation for corporations and then handing it to Congress to rubber stamp, may also have contributed to the record low numbers. 

The overarching question, of course, is how strong is a democracy in which the average American does not believe representative government is representative of them.

Out of 18 Senators on the Senate Subcommittee, Only One Shows for IPO Hearing in June 2012