56 percent of Iowans give Grassley thumbs up in poll

CEDAR RAPIDS - He's no Bernie Sanders, but Sen. Chuck Grassley is showing strong popularity among his constituents heading into his 2016 re-election campaign.

Sanders, the Vermont senator who's seeking the Democratic nomination for president, gets the highest approval rating from voters in his state of any member do the U.S. Senate. The independent, who caucuses with Democrats, earned an 83 percent approval rating in a Morning Consult poll of more than 750,000 voters in 50 states conducted over several months.

And while voter approval for Congress as a whole is barely above single digits, most voters have positive views of their individual senators. The poll found 69 of 100 United States senators have approval ratings of 50 percent or higher among their own constituents.

Grassley comes in 33rd among his colleagues with 56 percent of Iowa voters giving him the thumbs up and 27 percent disapproving. That's in line with other polls, although a bit under his re-election margins.

Grassley has received more than 60 percent of the vote each time he has run for re-election and hit 70 percent in 2004. The 56 percent approval rating tops only the 53 percent he received when he was first elected to the Senate in 1980, defeating Sen. John Culver.

Four Democrats are seeking their party's nomination to face Grassley in 2016: former legislators Tom Fiegen of Clarence, Bob Krause of Fairfield and Ray Zirkelbach of Monticello, and Sen. Rob Hogg of Cedar Rapids.

The sample of 901 voters had a margin of error of 3.3 percent.