The voter anger epidemic that has been sweeping the nation may have more of a consequence for incumbent candidates than usual. According to a New York Times/CBS News poll released Wednesday, six out of 10 Americans say that their own Congressional representatives do not deserve to be reelected.
This rate is much higher than usual. Though it is typical for voters to be dissatisfied with Congress as a whole, people generally tend to support their own representatives when the time comes around for them to run for reelection.
But this year’s high disapproval rate seems to indicate a rough road ahead for the Democrats, who risk losing majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives. The last time the Democrats lost control of the House, in 1994, polls showed that people were more satisfied with their own representatives than they are now.
High levels of voter dissatisfaction may not be such a bad thing. Often people blindly reelect an incumbent candidate simply because they have not taken the time to research them in depth. They blame the faults of government on the failures of other people’s representatives, while defending, and voting for, their own. Through cycles like this, we run the risk of politicians becoming complacent or corrupt, since high voter approval rates serve as an insurance policy for incumbents looking to hold on to their jobs. This is a consistent problem nationwide.
However, voters also shouldn’t let their anger about the recession cause them to make rash decisions simply for the sake of voting representatives out. Although many undoubtedly deserve to go, there are still plenty of good representatives in office who deserve reelection. Additionally, the issue that has been the root of most voters’ anger, the economy, was for the most part not the fault of individual representatives, and should not be the singular basis for voting incumbents out of office.
Instead of simply voting every incumbent out of office, people should carefully consider their candidates on a case-by-case basis during every election cycle in order to make educated decisions when casting their ballots. Rather than voting along party lines, or voting people out just because of frustration, people should take a step back to think about who would be the best representative of their district.
It makes sense for people to be angry about the current state of the nation. With unemployment hovering near 10 percent, the recession has affected individuals on a very personal level. Combine that with stories pervading the mass media about voter angst and it is not difficult to see why people want their representatives voted out. But while this frustration is justified, people shouldn’t let it blind them from making the right choices on Election Day.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
