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A Gallup poll released Thursday found record-high party gaps in approval ratings for Congress and the Supreme Court, with the latter suffering its lowest overall approval rating since the survey began.
A 61% majority of Republicans have a positive view of Congress, where the GOP narrowly controls the House and Senate, and 75% of Republicans approve of the 6-3 conservative majority Supreme Court.
But among Democrats, 6% approve of Congress and 11% approve of the Supreme Court.
The result is record partisan gulfs of 55 percentage points for Congress, and 64 percentage points for the Supreme Court.
“I think it’s both the [Republican] control and kind of the substance of what they’re doing, making their own party happy, and certainly making the other party very unhappy,” Jeff Jones, senior editor of the Gallup poll, said in an interview.
For Congress, he said, there was a similar but reverse dynamic at the beginning of the Biden administration, when Democrats controlled both chambers and passed partisan legislation.
The Gallup survey, conducted July 7-22, polled a random sample of 1,002 adults across the U.S. The poll has a 4% margin of error.
Respondents were contacted just after Republicans in Congress enacted sweeping tax and spending cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and as the Supreme Court issued a flurry of decisions before its summer recess.
Those decisions included the conservative majority limiting the power of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions and saying a Maryland county went too far in weaving pro-LGBTQ storybooks into its education curriculum. The Supreme Court also issued an order allowing the Trump administration to proceed with its plans to scale back the federal workforce.
The Supreme Court’s overall 39% approval rating was the first time it has dipped below 40% since Gallup started asking the question in 2000. It stems from the record-low rating among Democrats, as well as a 34% approval rating from independents.
The previous 61-point party gap record for the high court was set in 2022 after its ruling in the Dobbs case overturned the national right to an abortion established in Roe v. Wade.
“Early in Biden’s term, there really wasn’t much difference between Republicans’ and Democrats’ views of the court,” Mr. Jones said. “But once Dobbs came out, then you saw Republicans’ approval surge and Democrats’ plummet. And we still kind of see the effects of that.”
The Supreme Court’s approval ratings were typically near 60% in the early 2000s when Gallup started asking the question. But it’s consistently dipped below 50% since 2021, soon after conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to replace liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shifted the court further right with a 6-3 majority.
The current 39% record low is not meaningfully different from several 40% approval ratings for the court between 2021 and 2023.
Gallup has polled Congress’ approval rating for decades longer, since 1974. The latest survey’s 55-percentage-point partisan gap ties a record high initially set this March. The legislative branch lost 2 percentage points of support from each party, compared with the March figures.
The partisan gulf has widened in recent decades as Congress has become more politically polarized.
“It wasn’t until 1995 where there was more than a 23-point gap in ratings of Congress by party,” Mr. Jones said of when Republicans took control of both chambers for a decade.
He said the current 55-point partisan gap in Congress’ approval rating could shrink if this session follows historical trends for trifectas of party control in which supporters become frustrated about how much their party is accomplishing over time.
The party disparity in approval of Congress and the Supreme Court is still lower than the partisan gap in presidential approval, which since 2017 has averaged about 80 points for both President Trump and President Biden, 10 points higher than for any of their predecessors.
The July poll found 89% of Republicans approve of Mr. Trump compared to 2% of Democrats, an 87-point gap. The record high was a 92-point partisan gap set in Mr. Trump’s first term, just before he lost the 2020 election.
“People are probably more aware of what the president is doing in general than what Congress and the Supreme Court are doing,” Mr. Jones said. “And it’s very clear to people what party the president is, and not always clear to people what party Congress and Supreme Court are, especially if they’re not paying as close attention to what those institutions are doing.”
English (US) ·