Just when you thought Congress’s approval ratings couldn’t get any lower—they sunk to another historic low.
A record-low seven percent of Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday. That’s down from 10 percent in 2013 and 42 percent in 1973, the first year of the poll. As recently as the mid-2000s, that figure stood around 30%.
Today, just 4 percent of Americans say they have a “great deal” of confidence and 3 percent have “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress, whose budget deadlock last fall resulted in a federal government shutdown. A third of Americans said they had “some” confidence in the legislature and another 7 percent said they had “none.”
If that doesn’t sound grim enough, Gallup says the responses represent the poorest confidence levels in any U.S. institution since it began taking measure. The poll also has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points, meaning the actual approval rating could be as high as 11 percent — or as low as three percent.
- How an Alleged Spy Balloon Derailed an Important U.S.-China Meeting
- Effective Altruism Has a Toxic Culture of Sexual Harassment and Abuse, Women Say
- Inside Bolsonaro's Surreal New Life as a Florida Man—and MAGA Darling
- 'Return to Office' Plans Spell Trouble for Working Moms
- 8 Ways to Read More Books—and Why You Should
- Why Aren't Movies Sexy Anymore?
- Column: Elon Musk Should Not Be in Charge of the Night Sky
- How Logan Paul's Crypto Empire Fell Apart
- 80 for Brady May Not Be a Masterpiece. But the World Needs More Movies Like This