Nearly half of Americans would blame President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in the event of a government shutdown, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released Friday, as the hours ticked until such a shutdown would occur.
Forty-eight percent of respondents to the Washington Post-ABC News poll said Trump and congressional Republicans are mainly responsible for a possible government shutdown, compared to 28 percent who mainly blamed Democrats and 18 percent who said both parties are responsible.
If Congress doesn’t pass a spending measure — even one that funds the government for only a handful of days — on Friday, the government will shut down, leaving federal employees without paychecks until the problem is resolved, in addition to a slew of other ramifications.
Democrats, and some Republicans, have refused to vote for a funding bill that doesn’t include legal protections for young undocumented immigrants.
The Washington Post-ABC News poll shows similar results as one from Quinnipiac University released Thursday, in which 34 percent of respondents said they would blame Democrats for a shutdown, compared to 32 percent who would blame Republicans in Congress and 21 percent who would blame Trump (53 percent would blame Republicans, in other words).
The cell phone and landline ABC-WaPo poll of 1,005 adults was conducted by Abt Associates from Jan. 15-18 and has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points, according to the Washington Post.
