Charles Rex Arbogast • The associated press

WASHINGTON -- Congressional Republicans, already struggling against negative public perceptions of Congress, now face voters who say new scandals will significantly influence their vote in November.\nWith midterm elections less than five weeks away, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that about half of likely voters say recent disclosures of corruption and scandal in Congress will be very or extremely important when they cast their vote next month.\nThe poll was conducted this week as House Republican leaders came under increasing pressure to explain what they knew of sexually explicit messages from former Rep. Mark Foley of Florida to teenage pages.\nMore troubling for Republicans, the poll found that by a margin of nearly 2-to-1, likely voters say Democrats would be better at combatting political corruption than Republicans.\nThe Foley scandal, fueled by new revelations each day, has put Republican leaders and GOP candidates on the defensive, forcing them into a political detour just as they were preparing their final offensive against Democrats to save control of Congress.\nAt least one House Republican said Wednesday the GOP likely will lose control in November.\nFour-term Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho said he was "not confident" about retaining the majority in the House.\n"It was pretty much a given in conventional wisdom six months ago that the House was gone, we'd lost the House," Simpson said in an interview with The Associated Press. "In September we came back after August recess, conventional wisdom shifted we would lose three, four or five seats but would retain the majority. That was good until last Thursday. From Thursday, it went to fairly confident we were going to keep the majority to a real toss-up."\nThe poll also found that President Bush's efforts to depict the war in Iraq as part of a larger campaign against terrorism and to portray Democrats as weak on national security was not altering the political landscape.\nApproval of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq was at 37 percent among likely voters, down slightly from 41 percent last month. Bush's rating on handling foreign policy and terrorism also fell slightly, from 47 percent last month to 43 percent this month.\nThe poll of 741 likely voters was conducted Monday through Wednesday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.