New Polls Show Americans Oppose The Government Shutdown & Hold Trump Responsible


A new spate of public opinion polls has revealed that by and large, the American people are not on board with the government shutdown. These polls have been released as the partial shutdown draws near its one-month anniversary, and they show that Americans aren’t happy with the current state of affairs.

According to CNN, this week saw six separate polls released. They covered a variety of hot-button issues, from the shutdown itself to how people feel about Democrats in Congress, and whether Americans really support Trump’s border wall plan.

The results of these polls were clear and decisive. By and large, people do not endorse the idea of a border wall — and in fact, many are growing more opposed to it as the shutdown carries on. The polls also indicated that most of the blame for the shutdown lies with the White House and Trump administration — and not with House Democrats.

This may come as a surprise to some, as Donald Trump and the GOP have repeatedly tried to place the responsibility for the shutdown on Democrats. House Democrats have flatly refused to provide the $5 billion in funding Trump is demanding to build a border wall with Mexico. Trump has said time and again that he will let the shutdown go on for months, or even years — so long as he gets the wall built.

More than half of Americans – 51 percent – believe that there should be an alternative to ending the shutdown beyond agreeing to Trump’s wall, as reported by the Pew Research Center poll. Only 29 percent of Americans think that the end of the shutdown absolutely must come in conjunction with funding for the wall.

Other polls backed up these sentiments. One from Quinnipiac University showed that 61 percent of those polled said that they would support more border security measures that did not include a wall. This included 78 percent of Democrats, 36 percent of Republicans, and two-thirds of independent voters.

And in another poll by PBS NewsHour/Marist a whopping seven out of 10 Americans stated that shutting down the government in order to get certain demands met was a poor strategy for governing. Only 22 percent agreed that the government shutdown was a good strategy for achieving these goals.

The polls also addressed the issue of the wall itself, and the results contrasted directly with what Donald Trump has been claiming. Although he has repeatedly insisted that there is widespread support for the wall, the numbers say something different: only 39 percent supported it from CNN. The wall got 40 percent support from Pew, 42 percent from ABC/Washington Post, and capped at 43 percent in the Quinnipiac poll.

But one thing the polls — and voters — seem to agree on is who is responsible for the shutdown. In all four of the polls where this question was posed, the majority of voters said that Donald Trump was to blame for the ongoing shutdown. Only one-third of voters said Democrats were primarily responsible for the current state of affairs.

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