President Donald Trump has claimed that he has significant support among Americans for his aggressive, government shutdown-inducing demands for funding for a border wall — but a new Washington Post-ABC News poll indicates that’s just not the case. Far more Americans blame Trump and Republicans than Democrats for the ongoing shutdown, thereby acknowledging that a border wall isn’t as much of a near divine ordinance as Trump has claimed.
Some 53 percent of Americans say Trump and Republicans are “mainly at fault,” while a measly 29 percent say the same of Congressional Democrats, who have repeatedly sought to reopen the government without funding a wall. Meanwhile, 13 percent say both sides have an equal stake in responsibility for the shutdown.
Notably enough, Trump only garnered the implicit support of 68 percent of Republicans who said Democrats were to blame for the shutdown. On the other hand, a full 85 percent of Democrats went with their party line. 53 percent of independents blamed Trump, while only 23 percent blamed Democrats, a smaller portion than those who did so among Americans overall. The independents’ majority anti-Trump mindset in this situation might be a foreshadowing of a 2020 defeat — especially since Trump has said he’s willing to have the shutdown drag on for months or even years.
Only 24 percent of the minority who support the wall say Trump should stick to his position, while 27 percent of those who oppose it say Democrats should stick to theirs no matter the ultimate length of the current shutdown, which works out to around one in four Americans supporting the respective parties’ toughness in their stances.
Although Trump’s the one who’s refusing to approve any funding without billions for a wall, he’s repeatedly blamed Democrats for the shutdown, insisting the wall is an inescapable need. As recently as this Sunday, he ranted:
‘The damage done to our Country from a badly broken Border – Drugs, Crime and so much that is bad – is far greater than a Shutdown, which the Dems can easily fix as soon as they come back to Washington!’
In reality, undocumented border crossings are at an over forty year low, there’s no particular threat to the southern U.S. border from terrorism, and native-born Americans commit crimes just like — if not much worse than — those committed by undocumented immigrants. There’s no crisis, and there’s no invasion.
Around 42 percent of Americans support building a wall, which is a significant spike over last year but still obviously below even a simple majority. That group includes a full 87 percent of Republicans — notably with a minority still dissenting — and 70 percent of overall Republicans who more specifically say they “strongly support” the wall. The overall figure is slightly above FiveThirtyEight’s estimate of his overall approval rating at this point, which gives him the support of some 40.6 percent of the public.
54 percent of Americans actively oppose the idea of a wall, which is pretty much the same number who actively disapprove of the job Trump is doing, again according to FiveThirtyEight.
At present — and no doubt in part by design — the conversation about the wall and “border security” has swamped the national political scene, but other issues like the Russia scandal are still very much active.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
