Gallup: Support for congressional incumbents is at its highest since 2012

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Americans' support for local congressional incumbents is at its highest point since 2012, Gallup said Monday.

Fifty-nine percent of U.S. adults said the U.S. representative in their local congressional district deserves to be re-elected, the highest figure since 2012, the Gallup poll said.

Support was not as high as in the late 1990s and early 2000s when official U.S. House re-election rates peaked. Actual re-election rates in the U.S. House have ranged from 85 percent to 98 percent since 1992 and peaked at 98 percent in the election years of 1998 and 2004.

While a majority believe their personal congressional representative deserves re-election, most do not believe most members at-large deserve re-election.

With Democrats making up the current majority in the House, Republicans were less likely to say most members deserve re-election. Forty-three percent of Democrats said most members deserve re-election compared with 29 percent of Republicans.

"Democrats have a solid majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the elevated 59 percent of Americans saying their member of Congress deserves re-election augurs well for their bid to maintain their majority next year," Gallup analyst and journalist Justin McCarthy said in a statement. "This assumes, however, that the 59 percent holds for the remaining nine months before Election Day. If Americans still feel their member deserves another term at a similar level closer to November, this could mean a favorable environment for Democrats' prospects of maintaining power in at least one chamber of Congress."

Gallup surveyed a random sample of 1,033 adults from Jan 16-29 with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.