Unlike the other recent polls, though, the NBC\/WSJ poll also asked respondents to \u201crate the congressman or woman from [their] district?\u201d Those results were 45% approve to 41% disapprove. While that is certainly better than the 17% to 77% rating for Congress as a whole, the results still seemed low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I did a quick search. The \u201cmy member of Congress\u201d question is not asked as frequently as the institutional job performance question, but the trend line indicates that the NBC\/WSJ result is among the lowest recorded in national polls, since at least the mid-1970s (see chart below)<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For most of the past 30 years, generic approval of the job done by \u201cthe representative from my district\u201d lingered in the low 60s. We\u2019ve seen that generally decline over the past five years \u2013 with one positive spike in 2007. The trend also indicates there was a great deal of volatility between 1991 and 1994, although \u201cmy member\u201d approval rarely dipped below 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moreover, I found only two instances where the approve\/disapprove gap was nearly as small as the 4 point margin in the recent NBC\/WSJ poll: a Times-Mirror Poll from March 1992 (45% approve to 37% disapprove) and an ABC\/Washington Post Poll from October 1994 (49% approve to 43% disapprove).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both of these prior polls are instructive. The 1992 result was registered a few months before the election that saw Bill Clinton defeat incumbent George H.W. Bush during an economic downturn. Clinton\u2019s victory was unusual because \u2013 unlike his modern predecessors \u2013 he had no coattails. His party actually lost a handful of seats in the House of Representatives that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then we all know what happened in the next election cycle. The 1994 midterm saw the Republicans pick up a whopping 54 seats to gain control of the House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So will 2010 be like 1994?<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are some who look at the party ratings \u2013 Republican approval ratings are worse than the Democrats \u2013 as evidence that this year won\u2019t be like 1994. However, the Republicans were also polling lower than the Democrats in 1994. An ABC\/Washington Post poll right before that election gave Congressional Democrats a net negative 14 point rating and their GOP counterparts an even worse net negative 26 point rating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the day, voters elect individual members of Congress, not the party. A number of incumbents are consistently successful in overcoming their party\u2019s negative ratings. But trouble is definitely brewing when the \u201cmy member\u201d job approval number drops below 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question now is whether passage of the health care reform bill will change the outlook for this November. That depends on whether independent voters see the bill as good or bad for themselves. Up until now, their opinion has been mainly negative. But passage of landmark legislation can have a strange effect on voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Independents say they want bipartisan action, but at the end of the day, they\u2019ll take any action over inaction. On Sunday, the Democrats seemed to demonstrate that they can actually get something major accomplished, and some voters may give them credit for that. Polls coming out in the next few days and week will tell us whether that is the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the prospect that this deal could help Democrats is why the Senate reconciliation process will be a political football. It\u2019s not so much that voters are concerned about the individual \u201cfixes\u201d in that legislation. The Republicans realize that undermining the Senate Democrats\u2019 bargain with their House colleagues could douse any burgeoning positive opinion for the majority party generated by passage of the bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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