sadly, Republicans in Congress will use this poll as proof that the voters want them to be obstructionist scumbags.

The current Republican strategists seem to have abandoned empiricism for alchemy, and their search for gold will continue to be elusive! -Kevo

Nice to see that Patrick ("Our job is to drive down Nancy's gang of incompetents below the GOP level of approval") McHenry analysisisis (sic) and "Whizdum" is like it always was.

Way off the mark.

How's that "center-right country" meme working out for you now, GOP?

It's nice to see that the public isn't quite as stupid as the Republicans want them to be.

What gets me is that the congressional republicans gleefully proclaim that congress isn't popular as one of their talking points (for what I don't know). You'd almost think that was their goal: an unpopular congress.

Remember, that's for Congress overall. The DKos poll measures job approval for each party in Congress, and as of last week, the congressional GOP's approval/disapproval stood at 16/69. That drags down the overall rating (which is always described in the media as "approval for the Democratic Congress"); approval for Congressional Dems is floating around 50/50 (45/46 with undecideds) which, as congressional approval goes, is pretty darn popular.

Let's see -- For eight years Congress, including Democrats, gives up, gives in, and gives out for the rich to please a "conservative" president and their ratings slowly tank. (Well, maybe not so slowly.) Then, Congress starts doing things for almost everybody at the behest of a "socialist" president, and their ratings go up. The obvious lesson? Americans are essentially conservative. Life in the red sun solar system.

Low approval ratings for Congress have become so routine, it's kind of odd to see the legislative branch get a significant boost in the polls, especially in the midst of an economic crisis.

As your chart shows, Congress got significant boosts in the polls at the beginning of 2007 (when Democrats took over) and again in mid-late 2007, so its unless the enormous period over which there have been invariably low approval ratings is the past year and a couple months, your statement is utterly divorced from the one source of concrete facts offered to illustrate it.

Admittedly, the recent boost was more significant, but the fact that it is in the midst of an economic crisis and Congress has actually done something significant aimed directly at the crisis that conforms in general outline to the request of the popular President and that has the support of the President makes it entirely unsurprising, not, as you would say, particularly odd.

The poll trend illustrates two possible phenomena: that Congress was unpopular before 2009 for failing to challenge an unpopular president (as Greg Worley commented), or the popularity of Congress is tied to the president.

I can't wait for Marler's disingenuous interpretation of this data.

The reason their approval ratings are up is because congress is actually DOING WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS!!!! for the first time in 5 or 6 years. They are passing bills that Obama and many Demomcrats campaigned on last year (which is an oddity in itself).

This should serve as a message to all the 'blue-dog' and 'moderate' Dems in congress who want to put an break on Obama's agenda.

And the congress critters who were behind the banking deregulation push and its resultant debacle are going to be called out, um, when?

Congress is going to install real accounting and regulatory oversight requirements for banking, with actual TEETH included, um, when?

Who would of thought, another republican plan backfires in their faces.

God, the republicans are wrong about everything. Everything they claim will happen if what they want to happen is the exact opposite of what really happens. They say give taxcuts and deregulate to spur growth, the economy tanks. Then they say taxcuts to fix the damage done by all the taxcuts. What morons. I hope they never come around. If the democrats programs work though, I am sure they will try to take credit for it somehow though. Everybody better remember that the republicans tried to obstruct everything that we are doing.

It seems to me that most people give better approval of their congress folk than congress overall. Since we only get to vote on our congress folk perhaps a better number would be the median of the individual approval of all congress folk. Does anyone know if there's a number like that somewhere?

Ha ha