Rass 17%

Rasmussen: 17% Say the US Gov't Has Consent of Governed

That's the top line finding, in any case.

Daniel W. Drezner asks if he's missing anything:

The first line line of defense has been breached, but the second line of defense looks increasingly robust. Public opinion poll after public opinion poll in the wake of the debt deal show the same thing -- everyone in Washington is unpopular, but Congress is really unpopular and GOP members of Congress are ridiculously unpopular. At a minimum, S&P needs to calculate how the current members of Congress will react to rising anti-incumbent sentiment. If they did that analysis and concluded that nothing would be done, I'd understand their thinking more. I didn't see anything like that kind of political analysis in their statement, however.

In the end, I suspect Moody's and Fitch won't follow S&P's move, so this could be a giant nothingburger. Still, if these guys are going to be doing political risk analysis, it might help to actually have some political scientists on the payroll. Based on their statement, S&P is simply extrapolating from the op-ed page, and that's a lousy way to make a political forecast.

Am I missing anything?

Well, yes, you are: national public opinion polls cut very nicely against the President, whoever he is; but Congressmen are elected by district, and Senators by state. A Senator can be 0% popular outside his state and still win re-election; and a Representative can be 0% popular outside his district and still do so.

Opinon poll after opinion poll has shown, and for decades, that people hate Congress but roughly speaking support their own representatives. That being so, the findings on Congress aren't especially relevant to our diagnosis.