More in new poll would blame Republicans for shutdown

With the House and Senate racing toward the Sept. 30 deadline to pass funding bills, voters would be more likely to blame Republicans in Congress than Democrats for a government shutdown, a new poll found.

A survey conducted by YouGov asked voters who they would blame more in the event of a shutdown, and nearly a third of voters, 29 percent, said they would blame Republicans in Congress for the shutdown. Only 14 percent said they would blame Democrats in Congress, and 13 percent said they would blame President Biden. The largest share, 32 percent, said they would blame everyone — Democrats, Republicans and Biden — for a shutdown.

Across age groups, race, gender and income levels, respondents were fairly split between placing blame on Republicans and “everyone equally.”

Registered Democrats were more likely to say they think the blame should be placed on Republicans, while registered Republican voters were more likely to say they think the blame should go to everyone.

A shutdown is looking more and more likely because a group of Republican hard-liners in the House have made it difficult for spending measures to pass.

On Tuesday night, the House GOP was able to advance four of its 12 appropriation bills. While that will do nothing to avert a shutdown at the end of the week, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is hoping it will build momentum toward compromise.

The Senate, meanwhile, is well on its way to a compromise. On Tuesday, the upper chamber revealed and advanced its proposal for a stopgap measure that would stave off a shutdown for six weeks.

Congress has three days left to come to an agreement to fund the government past the end of the month and avoid a shutdown.

The YouGov survey was conducted from Sept. 23-26 using responses from 1,293 registered voters, and it has a margin of error of 3.2 percentage points.