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Poll: Majority see current Congress, not political system, as hindrance to progress
A majority of Americans believe that the political system could work fine, but that the currently elected members of Congress are a hindrance, along with an increasingly unpopular federal government, according to a survey released Thursday.
More than half — 56 percent — of those surveyed by Pew Research say that current members of Congress are to blame for the legislature's sinking favorability. Only 32 percent believe that the political system itself is irrevocably broken. Those figures are consistent across the ideological spectrum: only 56 percent of independents, 57 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of Republicans point the figure at the current crop in Congress.
The overall approval rating of the legislature remains in the gutter as well, with just 23 percent of Americans offering a favorable opinion. By contrast, nearly seven in 10 say they hold an unfavorable view of Congress.
The concern over personal rights and freedoms is largely driven by conservative Republicans, more than three-quarters of whom say the federal government threatens their freedoms. More than half — 54 percent — see the government as a "major" threat to their freedoms.
Republicans are also far more likely to describe themselves as "angry" with the federal government, with 27 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of conservative Republicans saying they harbor those emotions. But that particular metric seems largely tied to the current occupant of the Oval Office: only 7 percent of Republicans and 6 percent of conservative Republicans said the same in 2006. By contrast, Democrats describing themselves as "angry" with the government are down 16 points from 2006, with liberal Democrats down 36 percent.
The survey of 1,502 adults carried a margin of error of 2.9 percent.
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