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Beyond the tea party: What Americans really think of government
Election 2010: Beyond the results
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Also little changed in recent years is the percentage of Americans who see themselves as fiscal conservatives: About half of those polled identified themselves that way, almost identical to the proportion saying so in the summer of 2007.
Declining confidence in how government works now does not mean Americans believe it cannot work. Americans overwhelmingly think the country can be well run, although the percentage saying its problems are too big for effective governance has doubled from the early 1970s.
Despite the common view that the 2009 stimulus package has largely been a waste of money, Obama fares far better than President George W. Bush did in terms of public perceptions of how they managed the economy. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the Bush administration's actions made the economy worse. Assessments tilt more on the work the Obama administration has done to deal with the country's economic challenges: Forty percent say those efforts have made things better and 30 percent say they are worse, with the rest undecided.
Whatever dissatisfaction Americans might have about the way Washington works, however, nearly eight in 10 say that whatever its faults, the American system is the best in the world.
Perhaps the biggest change over the past decade is the growing partisan gap.
Today, 59 percent of Americans say the country is seriously on the wrong track, up a dozen percentage points from the summer of 2000. The change has been driven by a dramatic rise in pessimism among Republicans, with virtually no change in perceptions among Democrats. Fully 61 percent of Republicans say that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and that the federal government deserves a great deal of the blame.
The percentage of Democrats who give the federal government a grade of A or B has dipped from 47 to 42 percent; the percentage of Republicans giving Washington these top marks has plummeted from 28 percent to 8 percent.
Conversely, Democrats are far more likely than a decade ago to say they favor more government services, even if that means more taxes. Republicans have barely moved on that topic. And compared with three years ago, more Republicans now consider themselves "very conservative" on fiscal issues, just as more Democrats consider themselves liberals on budgetary issues.
The polarizing debate over health care has left its mark on Republicans and independents far more than on Democrats. Ten years ago, three-quarters of independents said they favored more government involvement to ensure access to health care coverage. Today, half do. Among Republicans, the falloff is more dramatic, sliding from 53 to 21 percent.
When it comes to supporters of the fledgling tea party movement, about three-quarters want government to scale back or eliminate its involvement in providing access to health care. But in other areas, including poverty reduction, 50 percent or more say there should be the same amount or more federal involvement than there is now.
Tea party supporters overwhelmingly say they would prefer a smaller federal government, and 81 percent consider themselves to be fiscal conservatives (56 percent say they are "very conservative"). Regarding the upcoming elections, the vast majority of tea party supporters say they want the GOP to take control of Congress.
One challenge for policymakers is that half the country thinks the federal government can balance its budget by simply cutting wasteful spending. In fact, eliminating waste in the budget would do very little to bring down the size of the deficit. Nearly as many say they think some useful programs will have to go to bring the deficit under control, but the number saying so has slipped since the mid-1990s.
When it comes to possible reforms, 60 percent say a constitutionally mandated balanced budget would make government in Washington work better. Just over half say the same about easing electoral laws to make it easier for third parties to compete with Democrats and Republicans.
A more radical proposition also has broad appeal: Fifty-six percent of those polled say things would be better if there were a national referendum system enabling all citizens to vote on major national issues. At least on this point, there is rare general agreement among Democrats, Republicans and independents.
The poll, the 20th in a collaborative reporting series with Kaiser and the Harvard School of Public Health, was conducted by telephone Sept. 22 to Oct. 3, and included interviews with 2,054 randomly selected adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
cohenj@washpost.com balzd@washpost.com
Assistant polling analyst Kyle Dropp , polling consultant Meredith Chaiken and staff writer Sandhya Somashekhar contributed to this report.
