If today’s polling news is gloomy for Republicans, it’s not that much cheerier for Democrats, either:

Favorable views of the Democratic Party have fallen to their lowest since the Reagan landslide of 1984. Even fewer Americans see the Republican Party positively, and Americans by 2-1 say they’d welcome an independent alternative for president.Being open to a third-party candidate is a far cry from actually voting for one. Still, 61 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll respond positively to the idea of an independent running for president against the two major-party nominees. Thirty-two percent say no thanks.
If having a choice is largely uncontroversial, the results nonetheless underscore the level of interest in alternatives – and the extent to which the two main parties are struggling for popularity a year from the 2012 election. The public now divides, 48-46 percent, in favorable vs. unfavorable views of the Democratic Party.
And the GOP fares even less well: Fifty-three percent see it negatively, 40 percent favorably.

A strategist told me recently that of all demographic groups, Republicans are currently the least satisfied – because in their minds, they worked their tails off in 2010 to elect conservative Tea Party Republicans to Congress, and yet they see so little change in Washington as a result.

In the ABC News-Washington Post poll, 38 percent of self-identified “somewhat conservative” voters see the GOP unfavorably; 30 percent of self-identified “very conservative” voters see the GOP unfavorably. Only 21 percent of self-described liberal voters see the Democratic Party unfavorably.