72% of GOP Voters Say Republicans In Congress Out of Touch With Their Base

Rassmusen Reports
Jun. 17, 2010

Republicans in Congress still haven't convinced the party faithful that they have their best interests in mind.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 72% of Republican voters continue to believe that GOP members of Congress have lost touch with the party base throughout the nation over the past several years. Twenty-one percent (21%) disagree and say they've done a good job representing Republican values.

This high level of skepticism among GOP voters is basically unchanged since just after Election Day 2008 and in surveys since then.

By contrast, 61% of Democratic voters think their representatives in Congress have done a good job of representing Democratic values over the past several years. Only 29% believe Democrats in Congress have lost touch with Democratic voters throughout the nation.

Among all voters, 18% say Republicans in Congress have done a good job representing Republican values, while 38% say congressional Democrats have done a good job representing their party's values.

Sixty-seven percent (67%) say GOP members of Congress have lost touch with their base, and 52% say the same of congressional Democrats.

The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on June 9-10, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Interestingly, while the Political Class largely agrees with Mainstream voters that Republicans in Congress have lost touch with GOP voters around the country, the two disagree over the performance of Democrats in Congress. Sixty-three percent (63%) of the Political Class say congressional Democrats have done a good job of representing Democratic voters, but 61% of Mainstream voters say Democrats in Congress have lost touch with their voters.

Most voters continue to believe it would be better for the country if the majority of Congress is thrown out this November, but they also remain unconvinced that a Republican takeover will make a noticeable difference.

Just 27% of Democratic voters say the average Democratic member of Congress is more liberal than the average party member. A solid plurality of 47% say that voters and congressmen in the president's party are about the same ideologically.

In May, the number of adults identifying themselves as Democrats fell nearly one percentage point to tie the lowest level on record, while the number of Republicans and those not affiliated with either party rose by less than half a percentage point.

Republican candidates now hold a 10-point lead over Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot for the week ending Sunday, June 13. That ties the GOP's largest ever lead, first reached in April, since it first edged ahead of the Democrats a year ago.

Sixty-one percent (61%) of voters now expect politics in Washington, DC to be more partisan over the next year. That's down slightly from February and March when tempers were running high over the national health care bill but 21 points higher than just after President Obama took office in January 2009.

But 35% think Republicans and Democrats are so much alike that an entirely new political party is needed to represent the American people. Nearly half (47%) of voters disagree and say a new party is not needed.