For obvious reasons.

(ABC News) — A fed-up public is greeting election year 2012 with a razz for the government, a jeer for incumbents and a wearying sense of economic frustration — yet also with sharp partisan and ideological divisions that make the contest ahead equally challenging for both sides.

Thirty-one percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll are downright angry at the way the federal government works, a record in polling back to 1992. Add in those who are merely dissatisfied and the total soars to 80 percent, one point from its high 19 years ago.

Nearly as many, 74 percent, say the country’s headed seriously off on the wrong track — not a number that bodes well for incumbent presidents. A year before the 1992 election, during the last downturn anywhere near this severe, 72 percent said the country was on the wrong track; a year before the 1980 election, 77 percent said so; a year before the 1976 vote, 71 percent. Those results presaged the one-term presidencies of George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.