Growing share in US say political system is fine — lawmakers are the problem, poll says

The phrase “don’t hate the player, hate the game” apparently does not apply to politics.

Most Americans, it turns out, believe the opposite is true when it comes to the government, according to a new poll.

More than two-thirds of U.S. adults, 72%, believe the political system can function just fine — it’s the members of Congress that are causing problems, according to a Marist College poll released on Feb. 7.

This figure is up from 69% who said the same in November and 53% who said the same in 2015, indicating a growing trend toward blaming lawmakers for the country’s problems.

On the other hand, just 24% of Americans agreed with the sentence “Most members of Congress have good intentions, it’s the political system that is broken.”

The poll sampled 1,582 U.S. adults between Jan. 29 and Feb. 1.

There was strong bipartisan agreement on the question of where to lay the blame, with 72% of Democrats, 68% of Republicans and 75% of independents holding lawmakers responsible rather than the system.

The demographic with the strongest feeling on this subject was white college-educated men, 81% of whom said members of Congress — not the country’s 248-year-old political system — were to blame.

Meanwhile, only 65% of Republican women said the same, making them the demographic least likely to criticize lawmakers over the system, per the poll.

The poll follows other surveys that have seemingly found the opposite to be true, namely that Americans are extremely pessimistic about the political system itself.

Just 27% of U.S. adults said the current system is working extremely or somewhat well, according to a September poll from the Pew Research Center. The poll sampled 8,480 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.

Meanwhile, 63% said they had little or no confidence in the future of the political system, per the Pew poll.

Similarly, a majority of voters across almost every demographic said the current system of government does not work, according to a 2022 New York Times/Siena College poll.

A slim majority, 53%, said the system was too divided to solve the country’s problems, per the poll, which sampled 849 registered voters and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

This story was originally published February 7, 2024 at 1:40 PM with the headline "Growing share in US say political system is fine — lawmakers are the problem, poll says."