A new poll finds that a majority of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s desire for extending a wall on the U.S. southern border, and most place the blame of a lingering shutdown that is based on that issue on him.
The CNN/SSRS poll was conducted over two days, January 10-11, and has a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points, according to reporting from CNN .
Within that poll, most Americans disagreed with Trump’s assertions that there was a genuine “crisis” at the border wall, although there appears to be a close split on the issue. Forty-five percent of Americans say that the crisis Trump talks of is real, with 52 percent saying the situation is not a crisis.
On the issue of the border wall itself, 39 percent of Americans say they want it built. But a majority of respondents, 56 percent, said that they didn’t see a need to extend the border wall beyond what it already entails.
The border wall is the major issue driving a partial government shutdown, with Democrats in Congress saying they won’t include funding for the project in any bill to the president. Trump has similarly dug his heels in the ground, saying he won’t sign any bill to re-open the government unless it included $5.6 billion for the border wall project.
President Donald Trump has said he has “no idea” if he will be able to strike a deal with the Democrats for his border wall and end the longest US government shutdown in history https://t.co/btyfw3xkGA
— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 13, 2019
The percentage of Americans opposing the wall correlates with the number who put the blame for the shutdown on the president, according to the poll from CNN, which found that 55 percent blame the president for the shutdown, while less than a third (32 percent) said Democrats in Congress were to blame.
Broken down by party, even 23 percent of Republicans said that Trump was to blame for the mess, according to the crosstabs polling data provided by CNN. Conversely, just 6 percent of Democratic voters in the poll blamed their own party for the shutdown.
Over the weekend, the government shutdown broke the record for the longest shutdown ever in the nation’s history. Sunday marks the 23rd day of the shutdown.
The polling suggests that Trump will face a difficult time getting his agenda passed in Congress, and may face severe backlash if he attempts to declare a national emergency in order to divert funding from other executive branch sources toward constructing his wall.
With most Americans opposing the project itself, and a majority seeing it as not being a crisis at all, the political capital Trump would spend on such an endeavor could be very costly, and all for naught as well, as Democrats are planning to oppose and challenge such a declaration in the courts should Trump move forward with it, per reporting from Politico .
The CNN poll also found that Trump’s approval rating remains low, with 37 percent approving his job as president so far and 57 percent of Americans disapproving.
