According to a Gallup poll released on Friday, a 47% plurality of Americans don’t want Congress to raise the debt ceiling. However, Americans appear to be largely ill-informed on the debt ceiling debate, as a a full one-third of respondents said they didn’t know enough about the issue to form an opinion about it.
In the poll, 47% said they wanted their elected representatives to vote against raising the debt ceiling, while only 19% said Congress should raise the debt ceiling. But at the same time, 34% said they hadn’t heard enough about the debate to decide either way.
Republicans were overwhelmingly opposed to raising the debt ceiling. Seventy percent of Republican respondents said they don’t want Congress to raise the debt limit, while only 8% said Congress should do so.
Meanwhile, Democrats and independents were more evenly split, with a sizable portion of both demographics saying they weren’t too informed about the issue.
A 46% plurality of independents opposed raising the debt ceiling, though nearly as many, 40%, said they had no opinion. Among Democrats, a 40% plurality said they had no opinion, while 33% supported raising the debt ceiling, with 26% opposed.
The high percentages of undecided respondents reflects how little attention Americans have paid to the issue.
In the poll, one-fifth of respondents said they haven’t followed the debt ceiling debate at all. And while 23% said they’ve been following the issue “very closely,” the same percentage said they’ve been following it “not too closely.”
The Gallup poll was conducted May 5-8 among 1,018 adults nationwide. It has a margin of error of 4.0%.
