Grist for the mill on next weeks elections

Grist for the mill on next weeks elections

With the mid-term elections just around the corner, some sobering news arrives for incumbents in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, which shows that a majority of voters say their own representatives do not deserve to return to office.

The national poll found that about 6 in 10 voters say it is time to give someone new a chance to represent their district in Congress, a figure that is higher than it was in 1994, when Democrats last lost control of the House of Representatives to the Republicans during the Clinton administration.

The poll also found that 80 percent of voters say that most members of Congress do not deserve re-election. Six in 10 Republican and independent voters said they did not think that their own representative deserved re-election, while fewer than half of Democrats agreed.

For members of Congress serving constituents in and around the Capital Beltway, however, polling numbers suggest incumbents are highly likely to retain their seats, with the only contest thought to be close being the one between incumbent Democrat Gerald Connolly and Republican challenger Keith Fimian in Northern Virginia.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Oct. 21-26 with 1,086 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.