More than four in 10 Americans believe President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are to blame for the month-long government shutdown, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.
The new survey found that 45% of U.S. adults view Trump and the GOP as “mainly responsible” for the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history. One-third of the poll’s respondents blamed congressional Democrats, while 22% said they were “not sure.”
Responses broke sharply along party lines, with about 80% of Democrats blaming Trump and the GOP and 72% of Republicans blaming congressional Democrats. Of those who identified as Independents, 46% said Republicans were responsible and 23% blamed Democrats.
And with the shutdown set to extend to at least next Monday, concern among Americans is growing.
Three-quarters of U.S. adults now say they are either “very” or “somewhat” concerned, up from 66% when the government shut down on Oct. 1. More than 6 in 10 Democrats said they were “very concerned,” compared to 26% of Republicans.
The congressional stalemate has severely impacted millions of Americans over the past month. Roughly 650,000 federal workers have been furloughed, thousands of flights have been delayed or canceled amid staffing shortages, and nearly 42 million low-income Americans will lose their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits on Saturday.
Though the Senate will not reconvene until Monday, Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he believes talks will continue throughout the weekend.
“I’m sure there will be discussions,” Thune told reporters Thursday. “We’ve got members on both sides who are continuing to dialogue.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) did not share Thune’s optimism, however.
“It’s not clear to me that John Thune is being accurate when he reports that there’s an uptick in bipartisan communication,” Jeffries told reporters. “What communications is he talking about?”
Poll methodology: The Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll was conducted among 2,725 U.S. adults, Oct. 24-28, via the probability-based Ipsos KnowledgePanel. Results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 1.9 percentage points for the full sample, including design effects due to weighting.
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