35% Like One-Party Rule

With midterm elections bearing down, it’s perhaps no surprise that Democrats like the idea of one party running both Congress and the White House. Republicans and voters not affiliated with either of the major political parties are less thrilled by the idea.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 35% of all Likely Voters think it’s better for the country to have one political party running both the White House and Congress. That marks little change from late October 2008 just before the last presidential election. Only 30% felt that way last November during an off-election year, however. (To see survey question wording, click here)

But 39% now say it’s better to have each branch of government being run by a different political party, although that’s down six points from the survey two years ago. Twenty-six percent (26%) aren’t sure which is better.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of the Political Class like the idea of one party running both the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, a view shared by just 28% of Mainstream voters. Forty-seven percent (47%) of those in the Mainstream think it’s better if one party runs the Congress and the other party controls the White House.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters U.S. Voters was conducted on October 2-3, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.