New Polls Show Just About Everyone Agrees That Everything In Washington Is Terrible
The public mood is moody!
[A] Reuters/Ipsos poll — conducted from last Thursday to Monday — found 73 percent of Americans believe the United States is "off on the wrong track," and just one in five, 21 percent, think the country is headed in the right direction.
People are disenchanted, dissatisfied, displeased, and disillusioned with what they see as increasing government dysfunction. Nor is it just that they believe the government is failing. It's that there's a widespread agreement that the government should be doing something—something!—not specified but totally different:
One big issue is public concern that the government is failing to address major problems. More than seven in 10 Americans say the federal government is "mostly focused on the wrong things," a sentiment that is also sharply higher than it was last fall.
…It all adds up to growing disillusionment with the system itself.
Fully 78 percent of those polled are unhappy with the country's political system, up significantly from two years ago.
How deep does the disillusionment run? For the first time ever, a majority of the public now says that, given the chance, they'd vote to oust their own man or woman in Washington:
Only 41 percent of people questioned say the lawmaker in their district in the U.S. House of Representatives deserves to be re-elected - the first time ever in CNN polling that that figure has dropped below 50 percent. Forty-nine percent say their representative doesn't deserve to be re-elected in 2012. And with ten percent unsure, it's the first time that a majority has indicated that they would boot their representative out of office if they had the chance today.
