Voters say they’ll blame Republicans more for a government shutdown

52% of U.S. adults agree with Democrats refusing to sign a funding bill unless Republicans restore health care spending to pre-OBBB levels

Two programming notes: First, I’m up at Harvard today to speak about polls and prediction markets at a conference for election analysts, presumably with many people who read this newsletter in attendance. Let me know if you’re here so I can say hi!

Second, if everything goes according to plan, I should have a long video podcast with Paul Krugman to post on here tomorrow (Saturday). He asks me about Trump’s polls, the electoral environment, public opinion on free speech and illiberalism, and other assorted topics. I hope you’ll tune in!

Today’s Chart of the Week is a look at the latest polling on the looming shutdown of the federal government. Let’s get to it…

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It now looks very likely that the U.S. government will run out of discretionary funds and enter shutdown mode next Tuesday, Sept. 30. This will mean the stripping back of many “non-essential” government services, including things like the Parks Service closing most offices, federal museums shutting down, delays in new drug clearances at the FDA, hiring delays for air traffic controllers, as well as the furlough of millions of federal workers (some of them are forced to go to work without pay). Trump’s director of the OMB, Russel Vought, has also said he’ll use the occasion to recommend permanent “reductions in force” for thousands of employees across the government. Social Security and Medicare are still funded through a shutdown.

The government is (potentially) shutting down because Democratic lawmakers are refusing to sign a funding bill that does not restore spending on select federal health care services to pre-July levels (before Republicans passed their One Big Beautiful Bill Act). The health care funding provisions in the OBBBA will kick millions off their government insurance and are historically unpopular.¹

But it takes two to tango. For his part, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) has said he won’t back down from demands for a “clean CR” (a “CR” is a “continuing resolution,” a bill that funds the government at current levels until a new appropriations law is passed). Republicans in the House passed a CR, and then went on recess through Wednesday. This means the only way the government stays open is if Democrats come around to the GOP CR (or if Republicans fully nuke the filibuster).

So here’s the big question: Which party will get blamed for the shutdown if lawmakers can’t reach a deal by next Tuesday? That’s the subject of today’s Chart of the Week.

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Our new Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll this week asked voters how they would react to three different hypothetical shutdown scenarios:

1. Generic shutdown: Voters were not given any information about why funding lapsed, just that it did.

2. Democrats protest health care funding: Voters were told the government shut down because Democrats refused to vote for a bill that did not reinstate funds for programs such as Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act to pre-July levels.

3. Democrats protest Trump generally: Voters were told the government shut down because Democrats voted “against a funding bill as a statement of opposition to President Trump’s broader policy agenda, such as immigration enforcement and the deployment of the military to U.S. cities.”

In each of these scenarios, respondents were asked which party they would blame more for the shutdown: “Democrats,” “Republicans,” “Both equally,” “Neither,” or “Not sure/don’t know”.

The results of our poll are visualized here:

According to our poll, a small plurality of Americans would blame Republicans for the shutdown in every tested scenario:

• 34% of adults say Republicans in Congress will be responsible for a generic shutdown, vs 23% Democrats in Congress, and 34% say “both equally.”

• If Democrats vote against a funding bill after Republicans refuse to restore health care funding, more Americans still blame Republicans (35%) than Democrats (24%), with 32% blaming both.

• Blame for Democrats rises in the third scenario, where Democrats refuse to help fund the government as a way to protest Trump’s government more generally. The split in this case is 36% blame Republicans / 30% Democrats / 24% both.

And when voters were asked if they supported Democrats “withhold[ing] votes for a funding bill unless Republicans agree to restore funding for some government health care programs (such as Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act)”, 52% said yes (29% strongly), and 36% were opposed (12% don’t know).

But notably, despite their support for the Democrats’ voting against a funding bill as a way to signal support for health care, few adults want the government to actually close. A plurality of the public favors both parties passing a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government open at current funding levels (37%) while they debate a longer-term solution. If that’s not possible, fewer voters want a clean bill without changes (21%) vs withholding votes until funding is restored (26%).

Check out the full results of our September survey here.

But a shutdown could equally damage the reputations of all involved — and of Congress itself. In the aftermath of the 2013 government shutdown, a Pew Research Center poll found ratings for both President Barack Obama and leaders in Congress falling by similar amounts. Economic anxiety and general anti-Washington sentiment rose, too.

Still, you can make a pretty good empirical case that Democrats should still fight for health care funding, since doing so does not increase the percentage of Americans who say they’d blame the party for a shutdown.

Put another way: If you’re going to get blamed by some people for shutting down the government anyway, you might as well use the opportunity to (try to) accomplish something.

1. Time to beat my good government hobby horse: Shutdowns are stupid. They are wasteful. To be specific, they are a stupid product of the way government funding in America works. Congress and the president must agree on a budget every year, or else funding for many services ceases entirely. This is not the way that most businesses, not to mention other countries, operate a budget. (The government never really “runs out” of money; it just can’t spend more.)

In most other countries, funding for the government is perpetual. Leaders change levels of spending with new legislation, but the funding spigot never turns off. There can be no shutdown because funding would just continue at its current rate until legislators change the law.

The debt ceiling is also stupid. Generally speaking, Congress spends way too much time and taxpayer money figuring out how to actually spend the taxpayer money it has already agreed to spend!