Vote Anti Incumbent

Congressional Popularity Doesn’t Help Anti Incumbent Vote

Alan Abramowitz, a political scientiest at Emory University makes the point that congress is very unpopular, even more so than President Obama whose approval rating has dropped, but still hoovers around 50%.  But in December only 5% of Americans approved the job that Congress was doing. That was still better than the 19% approval for the previous Congress.

He goes on to say the Congress is usually less popular than the president and frequently much less popular.
He continues: Discontent with Congress appears to reflect a widespread perception of the legislative process as complicated, inefficient, and corrupt. Americans find it hard to understand how Congress works and most of the information that they get about Congress from the media tends to be negative—focusing on partisan conflict, controversies, and scandals. But voters don’t blame their own Senators or their own Representative for these problems.

Therein lies the problem of why don’t we vote out incumbents if we don’t approve of the job they are doing.  We don’t like your Senator but we still vote for our Senator who represents us.  We are right you are wrong.

They tend to see their own Senators and Representatives as the rare good apples in an otherwise rotten barrel. Maybe that is because they reflect the views of the population in your area.

That explains why, despite the low ratings that Congress usually receives, reelection rates for congressional incumbents have remained very high—averaging around 95% for House incumbents and 80% for Senate incumbents over the past three decades.

Read more of Mr Alan I. Abramowitz article.