Americans blame Trump and GOP more than Democrats for shutdown, poll finds

More Americans blame President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress than Democrats for the nearly month-long government shutdown, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

More than 4 in 10 U.S. adults - 45 percent - say Trump and the GOP are mainly responsible for the shutdown that may lead the government to cut off anti-hunger benefits, has caused air traffic delays and has furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

Yet the share saying Democrats are at fault has grown slightly, from 30 percent in a Post flash poll when the shutdown began to 33 percent in the latest poll. Among registered voters, 37 percent now blame Democrats, while 46 percent blame Republicans.

Americans are generally worried about shuttered government agencies, the poll found. Three-quarters of U.S. adults say they are “very” or “somewhat concerned” about the shutdown, including 87 percent of voters who described themselves as “liberal” and 62 percent of those who said they are “conservative.”

But concern has grown as the shutdown has continued, with 43 percent saying they are “very concerned” today, up from 25 percent when the shutdown began.

High-level concern has grown across party lines, although Democrats are still more than twice as likely as Republicans to be very concerned about the closure. A 56 percent majority of people with household incomes under $25,000 are very concerned, the highest of any income group.

More broadly, 63 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s management of the federal government, up from 57 percent in April and 54 percent in February.

Among Republicans, disapproval on this question is up from 15 percent in April to 23 percent today, while disapproval among independents has climbed from 60 percent to 72 percent.

The government has been shut down since Oct. 1, when federal funding ran out and Congress failed to approve a new funding extension. Republican and Democratic lawmakers blame each other for the extended shutdown.

Democratic lawmakers demand extensions on expiring subsidies on Affordable Care Act health insurance plans before they will agree to reopen the government. Premiums for people on ACA health care plans are expected to go up by an average of 30 percent during the open enrollment period beginning next month, in part because the subsidies will lapse. Republicans have refused to negotiate on health care until Congress passes new government funding bills.

Trump and White House budget director Russell Vought have used the shutdown to dramatically expand the president’s spending powers, wresting the authority to direct billions of dollars away from lawmakers.

The administration has shifted resources - probably in violation of the law and the Constitution, experts say - to ensure active-duty military troops, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents and federal law enforcement officers do not miss paychecks.

Meanwhile, roughly 650,000 federal workers have been furloughed, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and tens of thousands more have reported to work unpaid.

But the shutdown will soon become even more painful. Funding for SNAP, the anti-hunger Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, is set to expire Saturday, threatening food aid for 42 million Americans.

The extended shutdown - which would be the longest in American history if it lasts until Nov. 5 - is also expected to shave billions of dollars off the United States’ annual economic output, though the full cost of the crisis is unclear because many of the agencies that track the country’s economic statistics have been closed.

Blame for the impasse largely falls along partisan lines, the poll finds, though independents hold Trump and Republicans responsible by a 2-1 margin; 46 percent of people who identify as independents blame Republicans, and 23 percent blame Democrats.

About 8 in 10 Democrats say Trump and Republicans are mainly to blame, while 72 percent of Republicans blame Democrats, with opinions little changed since the beginning of the shutdown.

Other polls have found a narrower gap in blame between Republicans and Democrats. A mid-October Quinnipiac University poll found 45 percent of registered voters blaming congressional Republicans more and 39 percent blaming Democrats more. And an Economist-YouGov poll found 39 percent of U.S. citizens blaming Republicans and 31 percent blaming Democrats, with 24 percent blaming both equally.

In Congress, both political parties argue the American people blame the other for the ongoing shutdown.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said on the Senate floor last week that the president refuses to negotiate with Democrats on extending ACA subsidies even as health care prices rise.

“Americans can see with their own eyes what Trump is doing,” he said. “I say to my Republican colleagues: Beware. The shutdown is on Donald Trump’s back, and the American people know it. They know that Republicans have the presidency, the House and the Senate, and the shutdown is on them.”

Republicans have similarly hammered Democrats for refusing to reopen the government to advance their policy goals.

“The American people are sick and tired of the Democrats’ dangerous political games,” Sen. John Barrasso (Wyoming), the chamber’s second-ranking Republican, said on the floor Thursday. “They resent being used by the Democrats as pawns, as leverage. Americans know who is to blame for the Schumer shutdown.”

People with incomes below $25,000 blame Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 46 percent to 21 percent.

The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll was conducted online Oct. 24 through Oct. 28 among 2,725 U.S. adults. The sample was drawn through the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, an ongoing panel of U.S. households recruited by mail using random sampling methods. Overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points.

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https://washingtonpost.com/documents/31b3e654-590d-4e70-9b1b-08c37d643b39.pdf

https://washingtonpost.com/documents/912fb9a7-98ec-4c93-83c2-ab5f90192ab1.pdf

https://washingtonpost.com/documents/b19259ef-6fac-4ba5-a674-075503d369f7.pdf