Voters apparently really, really like their own member of Congress even though the institution as a whole gets low ratings.
A whopping 90% of the House members and 91% of the senators who ran for re-election this year were returned to office, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Government (known as BGOV). That tops the 2010 re-election rates for both chambers, which were 85% and 84% respectively.
Think of it this way: The approval rating for Congress as a whole tied a record-low of 10% this year in the Gallup Poll. But as the BGOV analysis shows, voters don't hold such lowly opinions about their own members of Congress and they sent their representatives and senators back to Washington.
This is despite the fact that Democrats got the most votes in congressional races. Had more districts been anything close to competitive demographically, we'd have a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives right now.
