It is never their politician that is the problem. Its all those other politicians you see. Nevermind that a good portion of those "other politicians" are from the same party and more or less vote the same way...

My hypothesis is that people are (mostly) not subjected to the election time advertising campaigns of other (nearly identical) politicians. Their politician is from a small town just like theirs and has a cute dog and a nice family! That other senator from the next state over? Who knows, he's almost certainly a scumbag.

Advertising works; film at eleven...

Interesting, thanks for the link. There are very likely some hometown bias effects as well, but my speculation is that Congress as a whole is judged by different standards than a person's congressional representative. The former, I would imagine, would tend to be judged by its actions (and how they are portrayed by others), while an individual congressman can be judged based on how well a person identifies with him or her (something not possible to do with a large heterogeneous group of people).

Whatever the cause, it's a fascinating dissonance.

If I'm a Republican, and I have a Republican congressman, I like him because he represents my views, for the most part. I dislike Congress as a whole because half of it disagrees with my views, and the half that does agree with them is hamstrung by the half that does not.

Despite the rhetoric of "both parties are the same" people really only care about a few issues, which the parties differ on: taxes, welfare, religion, education, social issues, etc. I just got hassled on the street today by a college-aged male to support planned parenthood. Who do you think he votes for? Why? What does he think of Congress?