41% say random selection would produce a better Congress

The latest national telephone survey of Likely Voters finds that 41% say a group of people selected at random from the phone book would do a better job addressing the nation’s problems than the current Congress. Almost as many (38%) disagree, however, and another 20% are undecided.

These findings show little change from early January and early September 2009. However, the number of voters who feel a random selection could do better is up eight points from early October 2008, just before the presidential election.

Yet while 57% of Mainstream voters think a random selection from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress, 90% of the Political Class disagree.

Only 32% of all voters are at least somewhat confident that their representatives in Congress have the voters' best interests in mind. Sixty-six percent (66%) don't share the confidence, down 10 points from October 2008.

Again, while 79% of the Political Class are confident that their members of Congress do have their best interests at heart, 84% of Mainstream voters don't see it that way.

45% believe random selection would produce a better Congress; 12% think it's doing good job

During his State-of-the-Union address Wednesday night, President Obama spoke about a deficit of trust between the American people and political leaders. New Rasmussen Reports polling on the president’s speech shows just how deep that trust deficit has become.

The president in the speech declared that his administration has cut taxes for 95% of Americans. He even chided Republicans for not applauding on that point. However, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that taxes have been cut for 95% of Americans. Most (53%) say it has not happened, and 26% are not sure. Other polling shows that nearly half the nation’s voters expect their own taxes to go up during the Obama years.

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It’s important to note that the deficit of trust applies to all politicians, not just President Obama. “Americans are united in the belief that our political system is broken, that politicians are corrupt, and that neither major political party has the answers,” according to Scott Rasmussen in his new book, In Search of Self-Governance,


Seventy-five percent (75%) of Republican voters say their party’s representatives are out of touch with the party’s base. Other data shows that, among all voters, 45% believe people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress. Only 36% disagree. Overall, only 12% say that Congress is doing a good or an excellent job.

Voters: Forget elections, use random selection

A new finding by Rasmussen Reports opens up the possibility of huge savings in time and money, with no loss in quality, through cancellation of future congressional elections:

"Forty-two percent (42%) say people randomly selected from the phone book could do a better job than the current Congress."

This brings back fond memories of Wiliam F. Buckley, founder of National Review, who famaously said, "I'd rather be governed by the first fifty names in the Boston telephone book than by the faculty of Harvard."