Congress Approval Poll Shows Only 6 Percent Rate Lawmakers Good Or Excellent

Just 6 percent of voters give Congress a positive job rating, according to polling released Wednesday.

One percent think Congress is doing an excellent job and 5 percent think it's doing a good job, a Rasmussen Reports survey found. Twenty-six percent rated Congress' performance as fair, and 64 percent said it's doing poorly.

Voters were only slightly less lukewarm toward their own representatives: 33 percent said their representatives deserve to be reelected, while 36 percent said they don't and 31 percent weren't sure.

"Many in Washington claim that people hate Congress but love their own Congressman," the poll's release says. "However, just 24% believe their own representative in Congress is the best possible person for the job. Forty-one percent (41%) disagree, while another 36% are not sure."

Thirty percent of voters said their own representatives care about what they think, compared to 16 percent who said most Congress members care what their constituents think.

HuffPost Pollster's chart, which tracks multiple public polls, puts approval for Congress at less than 12 percent, with 68 percent of the public disapproving. That's actually an improvement from January, when nearly three quarters disapproved. (The chart doesn't include Rasmussen's polls, because they ask respondents to rate Congress on a four-point scale of "excellent, good, fair or poor," rather than whether they approve or disapprove.)

The Rasmussen poll used automated telephone calls to survey 1,000 likely voters on June 2 and June 3.