59% would replace entire congress; 1/3 prefer members chosen randomly from phone book: Rasmussen po

Congress was front and center in the national news last week and the American people were far from impressed. If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 59% of voters would like to throw them all out and start over again. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 17% would vote to keep the current legislators in office.

Today, just 23% have even a little confidence in the ability of Congress to deal with the nation’s economic problems and only 24% believe most Members of Congress understand legislation before they vote on it.

Only half (49%) believe that the current Congress is better than individuals selected at random from the phone book. Thirty-three percent (33%) believe a randomly selected group of Americans could do a better job and 19% are not sure (see crosstabs).

A separate survey found that just 11% of voters say Congress is doing a good or an excellent job.

Rasmus sen Reports

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[edit on 6/10/2008 by Mirthful Me]

Vote out ALL incumbents. AT every level from local to Washington. Get rid of them all and start over. And next election... we do it again. Career politics ends now.

reply to post by gottago


The mods have spoken, so I will obey... Though this poll is self-evident in its implications, let's make them clear:

The US public hates congress. It's approval rating stands at 11%. One-third of Americans would prefer a lottery to electing its members.

The cause? in a word: gerrymandering. This is the nasty, little-known practice of carving out "safe" congressional seats by concentrating like-minded voters with absurdly shaped districts that wiggle and squirm across the map to capture voter concentrations that are either predominantly conservative or liberal.

This form of election-rigging benefits both parties and is is not going away, and incumbents are protected from the generalized disgust with congress by this deceitful practice.

I sure am glad I'm no longer in the book, would hate to get that call.. And faaaar too many skeletons in this boys closet to even run for dog catcher.

Congress, the only entity with a lower approval rating than Bush, God save us all.

I'm surprised it's only 59% in favor of throwing them all out. Maybe the other 41% remembered that Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are in Congress. If Congress had listened to them a year ago, this crisis might have been handled in a much better manner. Instead, they let the patient bleed for another year, until it was on life support, in a coma. Now the only question is not whether the patient will recover, but will he die or just become a vegetable.