Poll: GOP disapproval rating hits 70 percent

Republicans in Congress have seen disapproval of their handling of the shutdown negotiations spike from 63 percent at the end of last month to 70 percent in the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Monday.

Republican handling of the fiscal showdown is the worst in Washington by far. Only 24 percent said they approve of how GOP lawmakers are handling the budget negotiations, down from 26 in the same poll from Sept. 29.

{mosads}Democratic handling of the negotiations is also wildly unpopular. Thirty-five percent said they approve of Congressional Democrats, against 61 who disapprove. That’s up from 34 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval in September.

While a majority of the public disapproves of the way President Obama has handled the fiscal negotiations, he’s seen his approval rating tick up. In September, only 41 percent said they approved of the job the president was doing, against 50 who disapprove. In the latest poll, 45 percent said they approve, against 51 who disapprove.

Republicans are hurt in the poll by the schism that’s developed within the party over what tactics are most effective in taking on the president’s agenda.

Fifty-nine percent of self-identified conservative Republicans approve of how their party has handled the negotiations, against 39 percent who disapprove. However, a plurality of self-identified moderate conservatives, 49 percent, disapprove of the party’s shutdown tactics, against only 44 percent who say they approve.

Some moderate conservatives have lashed out at their Tea Party colleagues for shutting down the government over ObamaCare, saying they initiated an unpopular showdown with no real leverage and no defined endgame.

The Washington Post/ABC News poll of 1,005 adults has a 3.5 percentage point margin of error.