From March 2009 to February 2010, Congressional disapproval has risen from 54 percent to 78 percent.
Congressional approval has plummeted from 39 percent to just 18 percent according to Gallup.
RCP lists the average from multiple polls on congressional approval and the numbers are consistent with Gallup's latest.
LA Times discusses some of the reasons for congresses dwindling numbers.
Now, Congress has 57 Democratic senators and 255 Democrats in the House. And it's one of the least respected institutions in government. The latest Gallup poll found that Congress’ approval rating is 18%, as low as it was in 1992 and down from 39% since the beginning of the Obama administration.
Tapping into that disaffection, Republicans have denounced Democrats for making major decisions about the healthcare bill in closed-door sessions -- such as when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) crafted a 383-page amendment rewriting the Senate bill as he brought it to the floor.
Democrats also suffered black eyes from special legislative provisions written into the bills to win support from particular lawmakers -- especially Medicaid funding breaks sought by Sens. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), moves that were dubbed the "Louisiana Purchase" and "Cornhusker Kickback."
Even if such practices are common on Capitol Hill, they were easily exploited by GOP critics at a time of economic hardship and mistrust of large institutions.
"The forces unleashed by the financial collapse created in the minds of people the sense that there are demonic forces at work in banking, real estate and, not surprisingly, in Congress as well," said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who is an expert on Congress.
The firestorm helped elect Republican Scott Brown of Massachusetts to the Senate. Healthcare action on Capitol Hill was an easy target for his populist message as he denounced "those backroom deals for Nebraska and others." His campaign momentum surged.
Now Barack Obama wants to put on a public Doc and Pony show to claim "bipartisanship".
The problem here is that he is not willing to scrap the proposals that were obtained by all those bribes and back room deals and plans to start from those deals and work forward.
Proposals that the majority (52.5 percent) of Americans are already opposed to, from the latest average of polling from variety of polling sources, via RCP.
Related:
JustOneMinute- "Everything Obama Thought He Knew About Health Cost Control Is Wrong."
.
