Voters Increasingly Blame Democrats for the Government Shutdown

Congressional Democrats are shouldering more blame for the government shutdown since before last week’s funding lapse, weakening the party’s brand a bit among the overall electorate even as their leaders experience a popularity boost among their own base.

According to a new Morning Consult survey, 38% of voters blame Democrats in Congress for the government shutdown, up from 32% when we asked voters whom they would blame late last month. Still, slightly more voters than not blame Republicans in Congress in the Oct. 3-5 survey, though that figure is down slightly from the previous week, from 45% to 43%.

Nearly a third of Democratic voters (32%) blame their own party for the government shutdown, up 10 percentage points as more have tuned into the debate. Republican voters remain slightly more likely to blame their own party than Democrats for the shutdown, though that margin has declined over the past week.

The increasing blame for Democrats comes after a surge of awareness about government funding talks. Following last week’s survey that found just 24% of voters said they had seen, read or heard “a lot” about negotiations to avoid a shutdown, our latest polling shows that 50% reported hearing a lot about the actual lapse in funding.

As both parties’ prevailing messaging about the shutdown filters down to the electorate, Republicans appear to have a slight upper hand in setting the narrative.

For example, 34% of voters said they had heard a lot about Republicans’ accusations that Democrats are trying to provide free health care for undocumented immigrants, compared with 26% who said the same of Democrats’ push to extend enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies before they expire at the end of the year. (Having said that, our so-called net buzz rating on health care — the share who heard something positive minus the share who heard something negative about it over the past week — fell to a record low.)

Regardless of whom voters blame for how they occur, history shows that both parties tend to suffer in the court of public opinion during shutdown. However, our data shows this latest impasse is thus far only bringing blowback for Democrats in Congress.

Congressional Democrats’ net favorability rating — the share with a favorable view minus the share with an unfavorable view — declined by 5 points over the course of the week, leaving them 7 points underwater with all voters, the same net rating held by their Republican counterparts, who saw no change to their own standing.

Among Democratic voters, some of whom had been itching for a fight with Republicans, sentiment about the party’s full Capitol Hill contingent has improved slightly in recent days alongside larger improvements for their New York-based leaders, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Over the past week, Schumer’s favorability rating among Democratic voters improved, from 47% to 53%, while Jeffries’ intraparty marks rose similarly, from 47% to 52%, suggesting more of the party’s voters like what they’re seeing from the two chambers’ opposition leaders.

The bottom line

Democrats' negotiating posture appears to be boosting sentiment among their own voters, but there’s also ample evidence that it’s hurting them among the broader electorate. They may feel that’s a worthy tradeoff for putting more focus on health care, a favorable issue for the party, and as we noted above, those efforts appear to be bearing fruit.

Shutdowns usually occur fairly far out from high-profile elections, which means they usually don’t have much of an impact as far as we can tell. For example, Republicans’ extremely unpopular ACA-focused shutdown in 2013 did little to prevent their romp through the 2014 midterms, when they picked up 9 Senate seats and 13 House seats.

Nor does the shutdown appear to be taking a serious toll on Democrats’ own advantage in the political environment ahead of next year’s pivotal contests.

Democrats lead Republicans by 3 points on the generic ballot, down from a 4-point edge in August, and well within the surveys’ 2-point margins of error.

With both sides of the funding debate showing little inclination to budge from their current positions, these findings will do little to change the political calculus for Republican and Democratic leaders, who have plenty of motivation to dig in and continue a stalemate.