(A new national poll backs up what most here in Westchester County and our City of Rye already believe - party bosses rig elections denying voters who demand reform any real choice. Exhibit A is likely above.)
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More voters than ever now say U.S. elections are rigged to favor incumbents and are unfair to voters.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters now say American elections are not fair to voters, up from 46% in April and the highest finding in surveys since 2004. Thirty-nine percent (39%) think elections are fair, but 14% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
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That could be in part because 68% think members of Congress nearly always get reelected, not because they do a good job, but because elections are rigged to benefit incumbents. That, too, is up from April and a new all-time high. Just nine percent (9%) think Congress members are reelected because they do a good job representing their constituents. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not sure.
The Declaration of Independence says that governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, but just 19% of voters think the federal government today actually has that consent. Sixty-two percent (62%) do not think the federal government has the consent of the governed, while 19% are undecided. This is consistent with surveying for the past four years.
Only seven percent (7%) of voters think the average representative in Congress listens to the voters he or she represents the most, the most pessimistic finding yet, while 83% think representatives listen to party leaders in Congress the most.
Fifty-two percent (52%) believe a random group of people selected from the phone book could do a better job of running the country than the current Congress. This marks the first time that number has surpassed the 50% mark. One-in-three voters (30%) disagree, but 18% are undecided.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on July 9-10, 2014 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
