Most Democratic Voters Support a Shutdown Fight With Trump, but the Rest of the Country Doesn’t

As Democrats in Congress seethe at President Donald Trump’s disregard for the legislative power of the purse, there has been a push by some to withhold votes to keep the government open unless their Republican counterparts can find a way to make sure the White House spends authorized money exactly how they authorized it.

When the stopgap measure to keep the government open after March 14 passed the House on Tuesday, just one Democrat voted in favor — but whether to fight back against Trump’s cost-cutting efforts led by billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk appears more complicated for Senate Democrats, who must decide in the next 48 hours whether to force a shutdown.

While there’s support among the Democratic Party’s electorate for this fight, it looks like a political loser among the overall electorate.

According to our latest survey, 53% of Democratic voters said it’s worth it to shut down the government if Trump refuses to spend all funding from the agreement reached by Congress, while just 37% of all voters agree. At the same time, nearly 3 in 10 Democratic voters said it’s not, along with nearly half of independent voters.

And though polls on hypothetical scenarios should always be taken with a grain of salt, it looks like a shutdown occurring under such circumstances would see Democrats (42%) take roughly as much blame as the president (44%).

While most Democratic voters (60%) would blame Trump for a shutdown, an equivalent share of Republicans and more independents than not would blame Democrats in Congress. 

The bottom line

This is a frustrating moment for Democrats, who are being urged daily by their most active supporters to fight when there are very few leverage points available for substantive action. 

Refusing to help keep the government open looks likely to resonate with a big chunk of the base, our polling suggests, but it would come at a cost with the broader public. Whether that’s a worthy trade-off at this point in time is a matter of intense debate within the party.

So far, Democratic leaders have mostly embraced a strategy of sitting back and waiting for Trump to implode. With the president and his Republican conference on Capitol Hill already losing the public’s confidence to handle voters’ top issue of the economy, you can’t say it’s without merit. 

However, that can be a hard argument to make to a Democratic senator concerned about looking too appeasing to a president reviled by his or her primary electorate.