Not a unsurprising thing if someone wants to look at this honestly and objectively. Also not as damning as people who are grabbing onto it for partisan spin are trying to make it out to be. Here were the numbers:
Pres. Obama - 43% Approve / 48% Disapprove
Congress (D) - 31% Approve / 58% Disapprove
Congress (R) - 21% Approve / 71% Disapprove
Now, on the surface the partisan reading of this seems correct. "OMG! Everyone hates the republicans attempt to stall this thing". However, lets dig deeper and view this a bit objectively across the board.
Republicans by almost a 2 to 1 margin were more unfavorable to their own party then Democrats were, with over half of Republicans being disatisfied while just over 1/4th of Democrats are. This in and of itself largely accounts for the difference between what we see with the Democrat and Republican results. The question that begs to be asked then is, why are the Republicans getting this low number?
If the way some in this thread have immedietely tried to paint the results were true, the reason Republicans are going against their own party is due to the fact that they want taxes raised and are mad the Republicans aren't compromising. However, lets take a more reasoned look around the news. Recently we had posts made of news stories of the Tea Party pushing for the party to "hold strong" and make an "example" out of things using the debt ceiling, not passing it. On the flip side, we have non-tea party Republicans floating various ideas out on how to get it passed, sans tax increases still, due to a feeling that the cieling DOES need to be raised but they want to get something out of it. However there has been little to no evidence that Republicans...either of the Tea Party variety or otherwise...seem to want the Republicans to significantly compromise regarding taxes.
In reality you have a situation where the Republicans are far more fragmented and their own base disastisfied with how they're acting than the Democratic counter parts because half the base doesn't want to hear talk of it being raised at all and the other half doesn't want to hear talk of not raising it...neither of which is really touching upon a notion that they're upset that the Republicans aren't compromising on Taxes. Because there's Republicans that are on both sides of the "raise/don't raise" argument, there's sufficient reasons why both types would be dissatisfied with how their party is doing.
So its far more reasonable, and based in reality, to suggest the Republicans low number comparitive to the others is largely due to the parties own base being upset with what the other half of the party is trying to do with regards to the debt cieling but has little to do with an unwillingness to compromise on tax increases.
Then lets look at the Democrats. 31% of people polled are favorably viewing the Democrats in this, which is not surprisingly, a slight bit lower than the national average in regards to who identifies as Democratic, which is just under 35%. Considering we've not been hearing near as much complaints and splits from Democrats about how congress is working on the deal, and the poll reflects that, its clear that they had a stronger base support for approval than Republicans did. Even more so in the case of Obama where only 22% of Democrats found him unfavorable in this. Considering there is no big split within the Democrat base, you would expect the number to hover around plus or minus 5% or so of what their average total is nationally.
Finally, Obama should be having a higher number than Congress. For the past few years now, historically, the President's been afforded a higher rating than congress. Many political scientists point to the fact that people are at times more defensive of "their guy", making it easier to be negative about Congress as a whole than their specific representitive/senator or the President. Additionally, Obama is acting as mediator, be it truthful or not, in this placing himself somewhere in neutral ground between the congressional Republicans and Democrats. The presentation throughout has been of him attempting to bring things together for a solution. As such, it makes sense for him to have a more favorable outlook from the public than those he's trying to bring together.
Ultimately these numbers don't surprise me and look about right. No majority in the country is truly happy with how things are going. The side whose base is most split amongst itself on the issue is the lowest, the party most cohesive is right around their national average, and the President remains higher than either of the two. There's nothing really earth shattering or truly impactful about the polls results.