The Politics of the Shutdown

William JordanUS Elections Editor
October 24, 2013, 12:02 PM GMT+0

YouGov were the only pollsters to track public opinion every day of the government shutdown. William Jordan looks at how opinion hardened as time went on.

Last Thursday with a late-night, last-minute vote, the government shutdown ended. And as many in the media were quick to point out, Republicans got virtually nothing out of the ordeal, no defunding or delay of Obamacare, no serious concessions from Democrats. Meanwhile President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress came away with most of what they had wanted all along: a debt ceiling increase until February 7th and the government funded until January 16th.

In one sense, YouGov’s research confirms what polls elsewhere have shown already: nobody came off well during the shutdown, and Republicans came off especially badly. A few days after the shutdown ended, YouGov found that 66% disapproved of Congressional Republicans’ handling of the crisis, to only 53% who felt the same about Democrats and 51% who felt the same about President Obama.

However, perhaps because we asked a more complex question that allowed respondents first to blame all groups they blamed and then pick which group they blamed most, our tracker also revealed a second trend. As the shutdown dragged on, President Obama was increasingly included as one of the parties responsible. As with any crisis, Americans began to look to the President for leadership.

Looking specifically at Independents, this trend against President Obama was even more pronounced, most of whom blamed either President Obama or Congressional Democrats by October 18th.

What these numbers suggest is that the normalization of crisis politics in the United States puts the president at a unique, structural disadvantage.

They suggest that even if President Obama can successfully make the argument to the public that members of Congress are acting irresponsibly, during an extended crisis like a shutdown a growing segment of the country will look to the most powerful person in the world and wonder: why can't he fix this?

View the full tracker results here.

Image: Getty