Public blame could pressure President Donald Trump to find a way out of government shutdown

WASHINGTON — A month and counting into the U.S. government shutdown, the longest on record, most major polls show President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are bearing the brunt of the blame over the funding stalemate.

Those polls, coupled with Tuesday’s off-year election wins for Democrats, could put pressure on the majority party to broker a deal, political analysts told Newsday.

While congressional Democrats have also taken some polling hits since government funding lapsed on Oct. 1, Trump this   week acknowledged the political pain the shutdown has inflicted on his party. He told Senate Republicans on Wednesday that he believed the impasse over a short-term spending bill played a role in Democrats racking up victories in statewide races in bellwether Virginia and increasingly purple New Jersey.

"If you read the pollsters, the shutdown was a big factor, negative for the Republicans,” Trump said during a breakfast with Senate Republicans at the White House.

Trump’s acknowledgment that the shutdown is weighing down Republicans could lead to a deal being worked out "very soon, if for no other reason than to take the media and public focus off the election results,” said Syracuse University political science professor Grant Reeher.

Focus on shutdown

Since entering office, Trump’s approval ratings have steadily remained underwater, typically in the 40-point range, but polls over the past month show the record-breaking shutdown is adding to voter unease over his second term and diverting attention from some of the president's recent actions at home and abroad that otherwise might have given him a polling boost.

His recent trips to the Middle East to tout the Israel-Hamas peace deal and to Asia to negotiate new trade deals have shared a split screen with shutdown news concerning growing flight delays and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments not reaching recipients on the first of the month.

An Emerson College poll released Friday found that Trump's approval rating has dropped four points over the past month to 41%, and a year after his reelection victory he has lost support among voting blocs that helped return him to office.

"Trump has lost support among key groups: Republican voters’ approval decreased 12 points from 91% to 79%, and his disapproval intensified among independent voters, from 44% to 51%, and Hispanics, from 39% to 54%," Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a statement comparing this  week's polling data with last November's data.

White House officials publicly dismiss the notion that the shutdown is hurting Trump politically.

"The entire Administration, including the President, will continue highlighting the workers and families who are suffering because of the Democrats’ decision to shut down the government,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in an email to Newsday.

But as the White House places blame on Democrats for the shutdown, recent polls show more Americans are blaming Trump and Republicans over the funding stalemate as Democrats refuse to back down from their demand that Republicans guarantee an extension of soon-to-expire Affordable Care Act health care subsidies in exchange for their votes on a short-term spending bill.

An NBC News poll conducted Oct. 24-28, found a combined 52% of voters blamed Trump and congressional Republicans for the stalemate, compared with 42% blaming Democrats and 4% blaming both the president and both parties of Congress.

In an ABC News-Ipsos poll released on Oct. 30 — 45% of respondents blamed Trump and the GOP for the shutdown, compared with 33% who blamed Democrats and 22% who said they weren’t sure.

Incentive for deal

Reeher, with Syracuse, said the poll results don’t necessarily reflect that poll respondents are supportive of Democrats’ actions, noting that respondents are likely holding accountable the party in power.

"I think both sides see that at this point, the felt impact of the shutdown is becoming deeper and more widespread, and it’s unclear how it might affect politics going forward, so they both have an incentive to end it,” Reeher said. "This off-year election seems to indicate that voters are expressing their frustration over the issue by punishing” the party in power.

Republican campaign strategist Michael Dawidziak, of Bayport, said the poll numbers may not weigh as heavily on Trump, who has long been critical of polling, but said Tuesday’s elections could help speed up the negotiation process as the state and local races are no longer an immediate consideration for either party.

"I think both sides were on their way to a compromise before the election, this might help speed it up a little bit,” Dawidziak said.

Lawrence Levy, executive dean of Hofstra University’s National Center for Suburban Studies, said Trump’s victory last year was propelled in large part by "moderate independent suburban, swing voters” like those who ultimately flipped Virginia’s statewide seats blue on Tuesday and elected a new Democratic governor in New Jersey against a Trump-backed Republican.

Though Trump is term-limited, Levy said, he and congressional Republicans are likely paying close attention to the warning signs sent to the party Tuesday night by suburban voters.

The shutdown, Levy said, "crystallizes some of [voters’] concerns about the increasing chaos in government, and economic stress in their own homes.”

By Laura Figueroa Hernandez

laura.figueroa@newsday.com@Laura_Figueroa

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.