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- Jul 21, 2005
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So in other words, your excuse is that people don't like Republicans anyway and prefer Obama + Democrats in general, so these numbers are no surprise?
I'll take it. But that's hardly a rock solid defense.
What? Did you read what I even typed?
My analysis of the poll is as such...
The Democrat's in congress's support is within a small percent variation from the total amount of the population that are Democrats, which makes sense since the Democrats have been generally consistent within their party on what to do with this. This is backed up in part due to the relatively mild (only 30%) number of Democrats that disapproved of their congressional representitives.
The Republicans in congress's support is a fair bit lower than their total amount in the population, which also makes sense because the Republicans are largely split within their party on what to do with regards to raising the debt limit or not so its more likely that members of their own base will be unhappy. This is backed up in part due to the rather high (Over 50%) number of Republicans disapproving of the Republicans in Congress.
The President having the largest amount of support also is not that surprising since its a long believed trend within political science that an individual congressman, senator, or President is likely to have a better approval rating than an entire body of congress because of human nature to be more understanding of "their guy" over a group where they can convince themselves others are at fault. This is why even when Bush was having horrendous, monumental negatives as President he still was far higher than congress's approval.
If the Republicans, despite the split in the base, had a 40 to 50% approval rating I would've said that would be shocking or telling. If the Democrats had a 20% or below rating I would've said that was telling. If either party had half of their base disapproving of them and yet had totals about on par with their total percentage of people in the population, I would've said that would be a surprise (would've shown significant independent pickup). Had the President been lower than either house of congress, that would've been surprising. If Obama had been over 50% approval, I would've been mildly surprised.
However...all three having sub 50% approval ratings, with Republicans recording the lowest and Obama recording the highest? No, that's what I would've predicted had you told me what the poll would be looking at in the first place. Its what makes sense from a political science perspective when looking at the entire landscape.