According to a
new NBC/WSJ Poll, the American public is dissatisfied. 52% of the country believes that the country is headed in the wrong direction, compared to 35 who think it's great. Also...
...Just 33 percent of the respondents approve of Congress' job. That's down 6 points since a poll in April and 8 points since January...
...According to this poll, by 47 percent to 40 percent the public says it would prefer Democrats controlling Congress after the 2006 elections.
On the
Nuclear Option...
...just 34 percent say the Senate should generally confirm the president's judicial picks as long as they are honest and competent, while 56 percent argue that the Senate should make its own decision about the fitness of each nominee to serve.
Other findings:
- Just 20% of those polled say the economy has gotten better over the past 12 months, an 11% decline since January
- 51% believe that removing Saddam Hussein from power was not worth the cost and casualties of that war
- Only 36% support Bush's plan to allow workers to invest their Social Security contributions in the stock market.
NBC & the Wall Street Journal uses 1 Democrat & 1 Republican to perform their poll, in order to remove any claim of bias. The 2 pollsters had different interpretations of the numbers. The
Republican Perspective...
...[Bill] McInturff, the GOP pollster, points out that Americans are upset with Congress focusing on the battle over judges, Social Security, trying to restore Terri Schiavo's feeding tube and the ethical troubles surrounding their members, including Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, instead of focusing on the economy, gas prices and health care.
"There are some core day-to-day issues that they don't see being addressed," he said. "The people want us to head in a different direction and hear different things."
Still, McInturff argues, it's much too early to predict that the Democrats will overtake the Republicans in the 2006 elections. "There is a difference between dissatisfaction and being a viable [replacement]. And we have a long way to go to 2006," he said.
Peter Hart, the
Democratic Perspective in the poll interpreted it this way...
"The public is exceptionally displeased with the Congress," Hart said. "It is [its] lowest set of numbers since May of 1994," the year when congressional Republicans defeated their Democratic counterparts in the midterm elections to take control of both the House and Senate...
...All of these findings, Hart says, are signs of an angry electorate. "If you are a member of Congress and you got the poll back, you better be looking over your shoulder," he said. "The masses are not happy."
The poll surveyed 1005 adults from May 12-16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1%.
Update [2005-5-19 1:45:54 by Rimjob]:
Al Rodgers posted pics of the NBC report of this poll towards the end of the comments thread.
He also supplied a link to the story about this poll in the Wall Street Journal, and the PDF of all of the poll's questions & response breakdowns.