Only 29% of the voters think the county is moving in he right direction, while 63% believe the country is going in the wrong direction. That’s no significant change from this time in 2013. This is however, a strong departure from the numbers of late August 2011, leading up to the 2012 election, when just 19% of voters felt the country was moving in the right direction, versus 74% in the wrong direction. At the time of the 2012 election the polling became much tighter-40% of voters believed the country was heading in the right direction, 54% in the wrong.
In addition, Congress’s average approval rating is 15%, compared to 75% disapproval. This merely continues a trend of extremely low Congressional approval ratings. In the last 4 years, voters have not exceeded a Congressional approval rating over 20.7%. In the 2014 Congressional election, the months leading up to election day on November 4th showed Congressional approval hovering between 10% to 13%. The Senate election results yielded only 5 ousted incumbent Senators.
What do these numbers show us? That disapproval for Congress and the direction of the country doesn’t erode the incumbent advantage.