Americans’ negative view of Congress has climbed to a record high, according to a new Gallup Poll. Disapproval of Congress has climbed to 86%, matching a high last seen in Gallup’s survey in late 2015.
Just 10% of Americans now approve of the job congressional lawmakers are doing, just a notch above the all-time low of 9% set in November 2013.
Gallup notes that disapproval of Congress has hit 86% five times since 1974, with three of those instances coinciding with a government shutdown or the threat of one. That includes this poll, conducted among 1,001 adults from April 1 to 15, as the Department of Homeland Security was mired in a shutdown that started in mid-February. Congress also reached an 86% disapproval rate in December 2011 and February 2012, when lawmakers were fighting over federal spending and the budget.
Gallup’s Megan Brenan suggests that the negative views of Congress in the latest survey may also reflect frustration over rising gas prices, tensions over the Iran war and presidential war powers, ethics scandals that have recently led to the resignations of three House members and Republican displeasure over lawmakers’ failure to pass the SAVE America Act, the tighter voting requirements that President Trump had called his top priority.
“Republicans have driven most of the recent decline,” Brenan writes. Just 20% of Republicans now approve of this Republican-led Congress, down from 61% as of last July. “By contrast, Democrats have consistently rated the current Congress poorly, and independents’ views have been relatively stable at a low level,” Brenan adds.
Of course, low approval ratings for Congress are nothing new: “Congress’ approval ratings have been mostly underwater since 1974, averaging 28% approval and 65% disapproval,” Brenan writes. “More recently, approval has remained below 30% for most of the past five years, with sustained stretches in the teens.”
The 2019th Congress started in January 2025 with a 17% approval rating, which peaked at 31% in March 2025, shortly after Trump returned to the White House. But approval fell and disapproval surged last October, as the government started what would become the longest shutdown ever.
The margin of sampling error for the new poll is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
