With approval ratings for Congress at near record-low, which party holds edge?

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With so much talk recently about President Obama’s struggling approval numbers both on the issue of health care an overall it would be easy to assume the Republican Party is on the cusp of a comeback. Sure enough there are several individual races in the upcoming 2010 midterms where high profile Democrats look in danger of being unseated at this point in time.

The bigger picture however remains that while the party in power always gets the most attention the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with their leaders on either side of the political isle.

A recently released Gallup/USA Today survey shows that both Congressional Democrats and Republicans are at near record-low approval numbers. Aside from a spike in confidence for both sides following the January inauguration of President Obama the overall trend for either party is a downward slide since early-2002. Currently the Gallup poll pegs Democratic approval in congress at 36% with the GOP pulling in an even more dismal 27%. Democrats reached their all-time low at the end of 2007 when just 30% of Americans approved of how they were handling their job, the Republican Party meanwhile cratered at 25% just before the beginning of 2009.

Republican voters are quick to call out what they perceive to be a lackluster performance by their own party. Just 39% of Republicans now approve of the performance of their GOP representatives, this down from 52% nine months ago. Oddly enough Democrats actually have an improved opinion of the GOP congress giving them a 20% approval, up eleven percentage-points from last December.

Perhaps the influence of Democratic President in the White House has given Democratic voters a more optimistic view of their politicians overall. They give their own party’s Congress a 67% approval rating currently, up seven-points from December. Independent’s meanwhile favor Democrats in congress by a narrow 28-25% margin down from 29-22% nine months ago. The highest marks ever scored for either party within their own party not surprisingly came in the wake of September 11, 2001. Democratic approval of the Dems in Congress climbed to 82% in the later stages of 2001 and Republicans view of the GOP surged up to 86% in early-2002. Similarly independent support of both parties reached a record high in early-2002 with 55% approving of the job Democrats in Congress were doing and 52% giving positive marks to Republican representatives.

Gallup isn’t alone in their harsh assessment of Congress coming from voters. A recent Fox poll indicates that just 27% of registered voters approve of the job Congress is doing, down from 30% a month ago and down four-points from mid-May. AP-GFK rates Congressional approval at just 28% while CBS has the figure even lower at 26%. Poor as that sounds the approval numbers being generated by Congress from the aforementioned pollsters actually mark a considerable approvement from the truly dismal figures collected from last October.

So where do the two parties stand in terms of a head-to-head match up looming in 2010? With the individual approval ratings of either party so low Rasmussen not surprisingly has a tight race depicted. Currently the Republican Party holds a slight 41-40% edge against Democrats in a generic ballot, this mirrors the overall picture over the past several months.

Of course the midterms are over a year away and much can happen in that time to shift the political landscape. The number of Americans approving of either party’s Congress in recent years has remained consistently low however. Does this perhaps point to a fight for control of the House and Senate in the years to follow as being a battle of individual races instead of that of an overall wave of public sentiment? Only time will tell.