I keep track of polls on occasion, the favorite of which is the RealClearPolitics.com average of polls.

It keeps arguably the most accurate account of polling activity for one reason: It averages all the polls together, the left-wing polls, the right-wing polls, the neutral polls — all of them. It then calculates the average of all the surveys taken together.

The latest RCP poll average on Congress’s approval with Americans is worth noting.

It puts the approval rating at 9.2 percent.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html

It was at 9.6 percent just two days ago. A week before that it was at 10 percent.

Many individual polls suggest that Americans are so angry with Congress’s handling of the budget and debt ceiling kerfuffle that they might return the House of Representatives to Democratic control in next year’s midterm elections.

The thought is putting stars in the eyes of congressional Democrats, namely Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, who could get the gavel back in January 2015 as speaker of the House.

The Republican House majority is neither narrow or huge. Democrats have to capture 17 seats from the Republicans to win back control. That’s 17 out of 435 total seats. It’s not many. Were that to occur, President Obama could get his legislative agenda unstuck in a hurry. Issues such as immigration reform might actually get passed. Americans also finally might be able to have a budget passed in a timely fashion, without the hysterics and histrionics we’ve seen of late.

The strangest aspect, in my mind, of the fallout from the debt ceiling and government shutdown debacles is that many hardline Republicans aren’t getting the message. They’re vowing to continue fighting the battle — to defund the Affordable Care Act — that they just lost.

I’m sensing that stubbornness lies at the heart of Americans’ disapproval of Congress in general — and in Republicans in particular.

The next year is shaping up as a rough ride for the GOP.