WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans consider the congressional influence-peddling inquiry surrounding former lobbyist Jack Abramoff a major scandal, and they registered an anti-incumbent note in a poll released Monday. The issue of corruption ranked high on Americans’ list of concerns in the CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey, taken Friday through Sunday. But with the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate up for grabs in November, most of the 1,003 adults polled said they don’t think their own lawmakers are corrupt. President Bush’s job approval rating remained steady at 43 percent in Monday’s poll, which had a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. His disapproval rating was 54 percent. Corruption ranked among the concerns most often cited by those polled, with 43 percent telling pollsters it would be an “extremely important” issue in 2006. By comparison, the war in Iraq and terrorism were tied for first at 45 percent, and health care followed, matching corruption with 43 percent. Only 42 percent of those polled said most members of Congress deserve re-election — the lowest response to that question since 1994, when Republicans took over the House and Senate. […]

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