Presidential vs. Congressional approval

Harvard's Barry Burden has posted an interesting graphic tracking presidential and Congressional approval during Bush's time as president:

In analyzing the data, he finds that presidential approval influences Congressional approval, but not the reverse. This result is based on only 56 months of data from one presidency, but it's an interesting finding. The most obvious implication, of course, is that the same fundamentals -- the economy and major foreign policy events -- seem to drive both presidential and Congressional approval, a result that's consistent with the findings presented in Erickson, MacKuen and Stimson's The Macro Polity.

Comments

[approvethis]

I understand that Bush's numbers are way down. But not as low as our Austrian governator. However, the democratic assembly here is about 10 percentage points lower than Arnold's.

Is there is a similar approval poll for Democratic Senators and House members?

It doesn't seem that Democrats are picking up ground on Bush's follies and intraparty disconnect.