Congressional approval slips to 27 percent in new poll

Congress’s approval rating has slipped to 27 percent, according to a new poll, as lawmakers feud over government funding, the debt limit and two massive spending bills.

The poll, conducted by CNN and SSRS, found 73 percent disapprove of Congress.

But while Congress’s approval rating as a whole is down 4 points since April, when CNN and SSRS last posed the question to adults in the U.S., most Americans report they are happy with their representatives.

According to the poll, 55 percent of respondents said their representative deserves reelection, while 45 percent said they do not.

When asked if partisan members should be reelected, however, the results differed. Forty-six percent of respondents said that most Democratic members of Congress deserve reelection, while only 37 percent of those polled said most Republican members of Congress deserve another term.

The low approval rating for Congress comes after a contentious few weeks that saw it face a number of legislative crises relating to President Biden’s agenda, government funding and the debt ceiling.

Both chambers passed legislation late last month to avert a government shutdown, just hours before funding was set to expire.

Lawmakers also passed legislation to suspend the debt ceiling until December, which came after the two parties engaged in a weeks-long stalemate that almost ended with the U.S. defaulting on its loans.

But both were short-term fixes, with Congress punting the battles into December.

The chambers are now working to negotiate the Senate-passed, bipartisan infrastructure bill and a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, which has proved to be a difficult task because of internal differences within the Democratic Party.

The CNN and SSRS poll also found that Americans are split on if Democratic control of Congress is good for the country.

Thirty-six percent of respondents said a blue legislative branch is good for the country, while 38 percent said it is bad for the country. Twenty-six percent of Americans said Democratic control is neither good nor bad.

The poll surveyed 1,000 people between Oct. 7 and Oct. 11. The margin of error is 4.2 percentage points.