Support for reelecting congressional incumbents at record lows: Gallup

A record low percentage of U.S. voters support the reelection of their own representative or of most sitting members of Congress, according to a poll released Wednesday, less than a week before the midterm elections.

In the latest Gallup poll , 43 percent of voters said they think their own representative deserves reelection. In polls going back to 1994, the number has never dropped below 50 percent, according to the Gallup report.

When asked whether most members of Congress deserve to be reelected, 15 percent of the voters said they do. This is also a record low in the Gallup poll.

The poll also showed that 51 percent of Republican voters said their own representative deserves to be reelected. That’s higher than the 45 percent of Democratic voters and 36 percent of independent voters who held the same belief.

When it comes to the fate of most members of Congress, the gap between voters is wider, with 29 percent of Republicans, 11 percent of Democrats and 9 percent of independents supporting the reelection of incumbent members.

“Because the poll does not identify whether respondents are represented by a Republican or Democrat in the House, the findings do not indicate which party’s incumbents face greater opposition from voters,” the Gallup report said.

The survey comes as President Trump’s approval ratings reach new lows in fresh polls from The New York Times/Siena University and CNN ahead of the midterms.

In the Gallup poll, congressional approval ratings showed a substantial decline, with only 14 percent of Americans approving of the performance of the 119th Congress. That’s “the lowest Gallup has recorded ahead of a midterm election in its trend dating back to 1974.”

Gallup, however, noted that the lowest rating at any point was 9 percent in 2013.

The congressional approval ratings also show a wide gap between the two parties, with 29 percent of Republicans approving of the way Congress is handling its job versus 4 percent of Democrats.

The results of the latest poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Oct. 1-19 with a random sample of 1,200 U.S. adults, according to the survey methodology. This includes a total sample of 1,057 registered voters. The margin of error is around 4 percentage points at a 94 percent confidence level.