Imagine leaking this to the media to make your side look good.
Democrats have taken a big hit during the Schumer Shutdown, at least in generic-ballot polling. They keep claiming, however, that the American people blame Donald Trump and the GOP for their refusal to pass a clean continuing resolution. Since few people really buy that, especially anyone with a passing familiarity with filibusters, Democrats have tried to invent data to back up that claim.
Today, they leaked the outcome of their internal polling to Punchbowl's Jake Sherman, and ... well, it largely speaks for itself:
This is from private house democratic polling on the shutdown. Their tracking poll says Rs are getting blamed — but very narrowly. pic.twitter.com/mlUTOgGJCG
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 22, 2025
Even a Democrat pollster can't show voters blaming Republicans more than Democrats outside the margin of error for their own curated sample. The result here is 45/42, which is a virtual tie in any poll, even if the poll were conducted by a reliable independent pollster. And even if this pollster was reliable, the trend is going in the wrong direction even in their own curated samples; the level of those blaming Republicans has remained steady, while blame for Democrats has ticked up slightly in the three weeks of data used in this chart.
One reply wondered why Democrats would leak this to the media at all:
You sure they want you releasing this, Jake? Doesn't look good for them
— just Alex (@NotTheWorstKid) October 22, 2025
It's curious to me too, since there are (quasi-)independent polls that show better arguments that the GOP may be absorbing more of the blame. Those are a bit older, as CNN noted yesterday, but still relevant. The trend, however, isn't good for Democrats:
In a Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted October 15-20, Americans blamed congressional Republicans more than Democrats, 50%-43%.
The gap was larger in a CNBC poll conducted October 8-12. It showed Americans blamed Trump and the Republicans over Democrats, 53%-37%. (Independents blamed Trump by a nearly 3-to-1 margin, 58%-21%.)
Before the shutdown started, polls showed the blame game favoring Democrats by between 7 and 11 points. Polling since it started has shown it favoring Democrats by between 7and 17 points.
How reliable are these polls? And what do they really mean? The problem with polling on shutdowns is that the voting public largely doesn't care about inside-the-Beltway stunts. After 30 years of government shutdowns, voters largely (and correctly) see them as political noise rather than serious issues. They may blame Republicans more than Democrats, or Democrats more than Republicans, but only those who are completely invested in politics really have a stake in that answer. Everyone else knows that the government will reopen again, and that 99% or more of the electorate won't see any personal impact after it does.
The real measure of the impact of this shutdown comes in other polling -- on the generic ballot. And as we have pointed out over the last few days, and as Harry Enten has warned on CNN, the numbers at RCP suggest that voters aren't impressed with the Schumer Shutdown:
Granted, the numbers here are tight, also within the margins of error for the polls involved. However, that's the point. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries threw this Hail Mary to improve the standing of Democrats going into the midterm cycle, using Donald Trump again as their bete noire despite the obvious failure of that strategy over the last two years. Instead of puffing up their marginal generic-ballot lead (~3.6 points) over the summer, they've effectively cut it in half over the last month. Democrats need around a D+5 in the generic ballot to win the House, and now they're down to under two points.
The longer this drags on, the worse this will get for Democrats. Voters may not care much about the shutdowns, but they do care about governing temperament, at least as one factor in congressional elections. Their refusal to pass a clean CR and to stick with a PR stunt at the cost of paychecks for federal workers will not help make them look like a responsible governing party, and the longer this wears on, the more voters will resent it. And as the chart above shows, Democrats are running out of room for that risk.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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