RealClear Polling doesn’t show a Congressional approval rating above 40% in the last 15 years. In the short term, Ballotopedia agrees. Gallup has Congress’s job approval rating in the teens.
In other words, everywhere we look, nobody likes what Congress is doing or how they’re doing their jobs. Every news story using those numbers predicts a massive change in Congress at the midterm election, shifting control to the Democratic party, and watchers hope they’re right.
But what none of those polls and none of those pundits are doing is looking at four hundred and thirty-five individual campaigns for four hundred and thirty-five individual seats in the House of Representatives.
And that’s why I think a lot of people looking forward to that massive change are going to be very disappointed next January 3, when the 120th Congress is seated. It’s very difficult to do legitimate polling on such a granular level, but the way our government is put together, combining the results of such tiny polling samples is the only way to get a legitimate estimation of what is going to happen. Because while the sentiments of 55%, or 60%, or 70% of the voting public in the US may be with the Democrats, that doesn’t matter. What matters is which candidate gets the greater number of votes in the California 41st, and the Texas 32nd, and the Florida 9th, and the New York 15th, and on and on and on. Each district, by itself, in an election of several hundred thousand people, upon which the opinions of 99.8% of the population matters not one whit.
Congressional approval ratings are always low. People never like what Congress—as a whole—is doing, or its direction. If that were the only thing that mattered, we’d see a tidal wave of electoral defeats among Representatives every two years. But we don’t. We don’t see that tidal wave, and we won’t as long as we have a body made up of representatives by geography who have chosen the boundary lines of their own districts in order to guarantee their re-election. And we, the voters, always vote to re-elect our own Congressional representatives.
As Ballotopedia told us, in the election of 2024, fifteen Representatives running for re-election were defeated in primary or general elections. Further, they say, since 2014 (six elections), a total of 125 House incumbents were defeated: an average of 21 per election (remember, out of 435 seats).
That’s the reason we keep getting the same non-functional Congress we all hate not doing what we want: because we only vote for our own representative. It doesn’t matter what I think of the Speaker—who lives in Louisiana. And it doesn’t matter what I think of the minority leader—who lives in the next district over from mine in Brooklyn. Neither does my opinion of any of the 432 other members of the House matter. I only have a say in who will represent New York’s 9th district. And the two major political parties have done such an excellent job of choosing their voters through political gerrymandering that almost none of the 435 districts have any chance of changing the party of the person who represents them.
A year ago—in April of 2025—Fair Vote said that 81% of the House seats were already decided… for the 2026 election! And this is not surprising or new. It’s been going on for decades.
So when everyone around me expresses optimism for change following the election of 2026, I’m the Eeyore. I’m the one who is not looking forward to the results, because I don’t expect very much, if anything, to change. Unite America claimed that only 69 of the seats were competitive elections in 2024. We’ve seen absolutely no reason to think it will be any different this time around.
https://www.uniteamerica.org/articles/research-brief-why-are-most-congressional-elections-uncompetitive-2
And this is one of those times that I don’t have a solution to propose. We’re stuck. We’ve let the parties gerrymander the country too damn far, and we can’t find a way out of it. So as much as I hate that Congress has abdicated its responsibilities; as much as I hate that Congress—even if its members wanted to—can’t do anything it should; as much as I hate the political gridlock caused by extreme politicians who only campaign in the primaries because they don’t have to compete in a general election… I fear we’re stuck with it all until we can find a way to tear down walls of power that the Democans and Republicrats have built for themselves.
Put simply: we’re screwed.
The current election is interesting for a few other reasons. One of them — one rarely commented on in the media — is the presidential line of succession. If something dire were to happen to both the President and the Vice President, the next in line to succeed to the presidency is the Speaker of the House. But since there is no Speaker at the moment, the line of succession would move on to the next eligible person, the President pro tempore of the Senate, Patty Murray of Washington. Incidentally, Murray became President pro temp on January 3rd, when the retiring Patrick Leahy left the Senate, and she was elected to the post. She is the first woman to be President pro temp. Following her is the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, and on through the Cabinet.
Ian Randal Strock 