Friday, January 18, 2013

Republican Party Approval Rating at 26% (And Falling!)

Yep. The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll finds that a paltry 26% of Americans have a positive view of the Republican Party. That would be the party that controls the U.S. House of Representatives only because it went to scandalously unethical lengths in gerrymandering. 

Since there is no chance the king of dysfunctional political parties is going to reform itself anytime in the near future, it seems safe to assume that GOP popularity will continue to plummet: 

According to the poll, 49% hold a negative view of the Republican Party -- its highest negative rating in the survey since 2008. (In fact, it’s been higher than 49% just once in the entire history of the NBC/WSJ poll.) Only 26% have a positive view of the GOP. 

By comparison, the Democratic Party has a net positive rating, with 44% holding a favorable view of the party and 38% holding an unfavorable one. And the conservative Tea Party movement, which took off in Obama’s first year as president, also finds its popularity at an all-time low in the poll, with an upside-down fav/unfav of 23%/47%. What’s more, just 14 percent of adults approve of Congress’ job (which is near the all-time low in the poll), while 81 percent disapprove (which is close to its all-time high). By the way, most of the recent negative movement for the GOP is among core Republicans. The GOP was already viewed very negatively by Democrats and indies; it couldn’t really get much worse with those two groups. So this latest shift for the GOP is due to the fact that a growing number of core Republicans were not happy with how the party handled the fiscal cliff.