The government shutdown blame game is in full swing on Capitol Hill, and early polls suggest Democrats are winning — at least for now.
On the first day of the shutdown, The Washington Post released a poll finding that 47% of U.S. adults blamed Republicans, compared with 30% who said the shutdown was the Democrats’ fault. Notably, independents were more than twice as likely to blame President Donald Trump and Republicans than Democrats, 50% to 22%.
More recent polls haven’t been as generous for Democrats, but they’ve still shown the party with a shutdown advantage over the GOP. A CBS News/YouGov survey conducted Oct. 1 to Oct. 3 found that 39% of respondents blamed Trump and Republicans, compared with 30% saying Democratic lawmakers carry the onus.
And a Morning Consult survey released Monday found that 43% of voters blame Republicans for the shutdown, compared with 38% who place the onus on Democrats — though Democratic blame is up 6 percentage points from before the shutdown.
“The needle is moving,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Tuesday afternoon, referring to the Morning Consult survey.
But Democratic lawmakers also see favorable polling on the issue they’ve placed at the center of the shutdown: health care. A recent poll by KFF, a health policy research group, found that 78% of U.S. adults want Congress to extend the Obamacare subsidies, including 59% of Republicans, 82% of independents and 92% of Democrats.
Democrats have taken note of their edge.
“Every poll we have seen shows [the American people] want us to do it,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said of extending the subsidies, “and they feel that the Republicans are far more responsible for the shutdown than we are.”
For days, Republicans and Democrats have been making their cases to the American people why the other party is responsible for the shutdown, confident that their analyses of the state of affairs will resonate more among the public.
Republicans have pointed to the five times all but three Senate Democrats have voted against the House-passed funding bill, blocking the measure from reaching the 60 votes needed to advance and eventually land on Trump’s desk. Republicans have continued staging the votes to emphasize the Democratic opposition.
“We have all voted repeatedly, over and over, to keep the government open, and it comes down to the necessity of 60 votes in the Senate. We only have 53 Republicans,” Johnson said Tuesday. “And so we have to have a handful of Democrats who will wake up, do the right thing and stop inflicting pain on the American people so that they could score political points.”
Democrats are standing their ground, demanding that any funding bill address their health care priorities, arguing that Republicans are to blame because they control all three levers of government — even though the 60-vote filibuster prevents the majority party from taking unilateral action.
“This is their shutdown,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said Monday on MSNBC. “They control the House, the Senate and the presidency.”
The campaign arms for both Democrats and Republicans in the House are already running advertisements hitting vulnerable lawmakers for their postures during the shutdown.
Seven days into the shutdown blame game — which has been complete with memes, a challenge to debate on the House floor and, notably, a lack of bipartisan conversations — Democrats clearly think they have the upper hand.
When you ask Republicans why, the answer varies.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., had two theories. First, he pointed to the rules of the Senate, which include the 60-vote filibuster needed to advance legislation. With the current makeup of the Senate, that requires bipartisan cooperation.
“The Republicans have the House, the Senate and the White House, and everyone thinks, well, they run the whole place, they can be able to do anything. Because people don’t understand the intricacies of cloture,” Lankford told MSNBC. “They don’t understand what that looks like when Democrats will block 60 votes from actually coming.”
Pressed about how Republicans can make a better case to the American people, Lankford said the resonance of the messages from both parties depends significantly on where Americans get their news.
“It’s the framing of it, it’s where you track on social media, it’s the algorithm that’s coming at you,” he said. Some Republicans brushed off the polling deficit. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told MSNBC that he doesn’t care who gets the blame or the credit for the shutdown, adding: “What I care about is that people in my state are not going to be able to, for farmers, get loans; if they want to get onto Medicare, they’re not going to be able to do it; if they go to the VA, they’re not going to be able to get some treatments; and pretty soon, if they’re in the military, they’re not going to get paid.” He said the whole situation was “ridiculous.” “And that’s the Democrats’ choice,” Hawley said. “So I hope they’ll think better real fast.” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., theorized that the poor polling for Republicans on the shutdown was a result of how the surveys were being conducted. “You have to ask the pollsters how they asked the questions,” Scott said. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., the chair of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, meanwhile, expressed optimism that the polling would turn around as the lights remain off in Washington. “Our argument is quite simply open the government for seven weeks and let’s have these discussions. I mean, to me, that’s pretty simple,” Capito told MSNBC. “I would say as the longer it goes on, I think the reality of the simple argument that we have, which is quite reasonable, is let’s open the government.” But Democrats believe their focus on health care is a winning message as the shutdown drags on. “I think what is important is that we’re talking about health care, which is something that’s just foundational to every family I know,” said Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich. “They’re all getting these letters, right now, in the mail and sending them to us, posting them online.” She said many people are seeing 10% to 20% increases in their employer-provided insurance. “So this isn’t about someone else on Medicaid. This isn’t even about someone else on the [Affordable Care Act],” she said. “This is about everyone else being the bill payer for the big, beautiful bill.” Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., echoed that sentiment, saying Americans are “looking at their bills and asking themselves, ‘How am I dealing with the cost of things?’” “What is resonating with people is that this isn’t simply a political or a policy conversation; this is about something that’s going to imminently impact their lives,” Blunt Rochester said. “And I think that people can see that we’re fighting, No. 1, to keep government open, but also to restore their health care cuts so that people aren’t impacted. I think it’s that simple.”
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
