"Poll sees a new low in Americans' approval of Congress"

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-sees-a-new-low-in-americans-approval-of-congress/2011/10/04/gIQAc0yQML_story.html

I thought this would be an interesting article to discuss in light of recent class discussion about the impact of polling on public opionion and, ultimately, presidential elections.

We discussed in class the fact that polls are in no way exact, especially due to lack of voter turnout and Americans' lack of substantial political knowlegde - something that this graph reflects. While only 1% of those polled failed to state an opinion about how well the government was working (upper left pie chart), the number jumps up to 9% of people saying "no opinion" when the dissatisfied are asked who is to blame (upper right pie chart) - meaning that while Americans do believe something is wrong, many do not know enough about the government to say what exactly is wrong. This trend is also reflected in the question about military and domestic cuts (bottom right pie chart) - 7% stating that they had no opinion about a major government policy. While 7 and 9% are not particularly large percentages themselves, 9% of Americans as a whole is a much larger, as well as more influential, number.

In any case, the article itself discussed the fact that only 14% of Americans are satisfied with the actions of Congress at this point in time, which is the lowest that number has been in the past 20 years - and the majority of these numbers are "strongly dissatisfied". Most of this distaste is accredited to the problems over the debt ceiling this summer, as well as plummeting approval of President Obama, suggesting a downturn in trust in U.S. Government overall. 

What I think is most important about these statistics are the implications on Americans both practically and ideologically - in a practical sense, it becomes a serious problem when the branch of government with the most enumerated powers in the Constitution is no longer able to represent the beliefs and wishes of the people - laws will not accurately reflect the needs of current American society. And in an ideological sense, a government that does not have the faith of the citizens it governs ceases to have enough power to protect those citizens. I think it has been easy for citizens to say that they are dissatisfied with government - which is something that needed to be acknowledged - but perhaps it is time to go about deciding what exactly is going wrong to better determine what issues should control this next presidential election.