Approval of the Republican-led Congress has collapsed to just 10%, according to a new Gallup poll, a rating so low it ties the worst mark the organization has recorded in its decades of tracking the institution. The same survey found 86% of Americans now disapprove of the job Congress is doing.
The numbers, released April 22 from a survey conducted April 1-15 among 1,001 U.S. adults, paint a picture of an institution that has lost the confidence of nearly the entire country. And unlike the usual partisan splits that define American politics, the disapproval cuts across every line.
A Rating That Ties Rock Bottom
Ten percent approval is not just bad – it is historically bad. Gallup has been asking Americans how they feel about Congress for generations, and this reading matches the lowest figure the pollster has ever documented. Congressional approval has long trailed that of the presidency and the courts, but a single-digit-adjacent number reflects a depth of frustration that rarely surfaces so starkly.
The flip side of the same coin is the 86% disapproval figure. That is essentially everyone who holds an opinion saying the same thing at the same time. In a country where it can be hard to get a supermajority to agree on almost anything, that level of shared dissatisfaction is its own kind of statement.
Even Republicans Have Walked Away
The most striking detail sits inside the party that runs the building. Just 20% of Republicans said they approve of the Republican-led Congress. When four out of five of your own voters decline to back the institution your party controls, that is not a communications problem that better talking points can fix. It is a collapse of confidence from the base outward.
Historically, the party in power can usually count on its own supporters to rate Congress favorably, even when the broader public sours. The fact that so few Republicans are willing to do so here signals frustration that reaches well beyond the opposition.
Far Below Even the White House
For all the attention paid to the presidency, Congress cannot clear even that bar. President Donald Trump’s job approval sits at roughly 42% in recent NBC polling. The Republican Congress is at 10%. Same party, same broad agenda – and lawmakers are polling more than 30 points below the president they have spent the year backing.
The comparison is worth stating carefully: this is approval measured against approval. On that apples-to-apples basis, the institution charged with writing the nation’s laws is dramatically less popular than the man in the Oval Office, despite sharing his political label.
What This Means for Americans
Numbers like these are more than a scoreboard. They reflect how people feel about whether Washington is working for them – on costs, on healthcare, on the basic functioning of government. When approval falls into the single digits and even the majority party’s own voters have tuned out, it raises a pointed question about accountability: who answers for an institution that almost no one thinks is doing its job?
With the midterm cycle approaching, a Congress polling at a record-tying low gives every incumbent a reason to worry and every challenger a reason to run. Voters, ultimately, are the ones who decide whether that 10% is a warning or a verdict.
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