Americans Say New Republican Congress Is Off to a Bad Start

With House Republicans making headlines for infighting, including over debt ceiling negotiations, a new poll finds that the American people feel like they are focusing on the wrong issues.According to new polling for CNN conducted by SSRS, 27 percent of American adults think that Republican leadership in the House has its priorities straight.A majority of Americans are unhappy with the way both Democrat and Republican leaders are handling their jobs, the poll finds, at 59 percent and 67 percent disapproval respectively.Although Congress is perennially unpopular, the high disapproval rating for GOP leadership was driven in part by Republican voters, 42 percent of whom expressed disapproval in the poll.In terms of the heads of both parties in the House, 19 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of Speaker McCarthy while 38 percent hold an unfavorable view. For the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, those numbers were 21 percent and 22 percent respectively.The poll of 1,004 American adults, conducted between January 19 and 22, has a margin of error of four points, which could be larger for subgroups of the poll.Congress’s unpopularity is nothing new. According to Gallup, Congress as a whole has had an approval rating of less than 40 percent since 2005, though individual representatives often have higher ratings.Considering that the 118th House only welcomed 75 freshmen representatives — about 17 percent of the entire body — there was some expectation that the approval rating would extend the years-long trend, especially considering that the country was entering a phase of divided government.The finding that Americans feel House Republicans are focusing on the wrong priorities is not good news for the GOP, which is aiming to improve its image ahead of the 2024 presidential election and following a lackluster performance in 2022.House Republicans’ problems are compounded by another of the poll’s findings — that the majority of Americans, 60 percent, expect the House GOP to have more influence in the next two years than President Biden.So far in the 188th Congress, Republicans have attracted attention from the press and the public mostly for infighting over issues like the fraught speaker election and what they plan to demand in debt ceiling negotiations.They have also received attention for the behavior of certain members of the conference, including Representative George Santos, who appears to have lied about almost all of his biography prior to the election.In terms of congressional action, investigations into Mr. Biden and his family have been a priority, though it’s not clear this issue appeals to many in the American public outside the Republican base.House Republicans have also been attacked by Democrats for proposals that Mr. McCarthy agreed to bring to the floor in the speaker battle, like a measure that would impose a national sales tax in place of income tax.Most of these issues are a far cry from those that Republicans stressed on the campaign trail, which included reducing inflation, border security, reducing gas prices, and reducing crime.While there has been movement on some of these issues in the Republican House, it’s clear that the American people do not perceive the Republican majority prioritizing them or other topics that are most important to them.When asked about their most important issues, Americans overwhelmingly pointed to the economy — including inflation, housing costs, and food and gas prices — as their top priority, at 48 percent.After economic issues, top concerns were immigration at 11 percent, gun violence at 6 percent, government spending at 6 percent, and political division and extremism at 5 percent. Covid polled at less than 1 percent.

Americans Say New Republican Congress Is Off to a Bad Start

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