As you may know, if the Republicans in Congress and President Obama do not agree on federal spending goals by April 8, the federal government will have to shut down all of its nonessential services until a budget is passed. What would you like the people in government who represent your views on the budget to do in this situation? Should they - [ROTATED: hold out for the basic budget plan they want, even if that means the government shuts down, (or should they) agree to a compromise budget plan, even if that means they pass a budget you disagree with]?
The results:
- 33% Hold out, even if government shuts down
- 58% Agree to compromise budget plan, even if you disagree
Here we have a clear majority choosing the "compromise" alternative. Majorities of Americans say that the people in Washington "who represent your views" should agree to a compromise budget plan, "even if that means they pass a budget you disagree with". Other research firms have worded this type of question in different ways. The results are the same. Clear majorities want compromise.
So if there is a shutdown, we would have a Congress, which as a body was elected to represent the American public, taking action that is not representative of the American public.
But. As my colleague Lydia Saad wrote this week: "The difficulty for House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders is that rank-and-file Republicans' views on this question are starkly different from those of the public at large."
A slight majority of 51% of Republicans say that those who share their views should hold out for the budget plan they want -- even if that means a shutdown of the Federal government. Twenty-seven percent of Democrats and 29% of independents agree.
Of course, each side in these types of negotiations believes they are making a reasonable offer and that the other side is being recalcitrant. That's why we have a NFL football lockout going on right now. Both sides blame the other for not being willing to compromise.
Many who follow politics for a living cannot help but look at the political consequences of anything that happens. This follows the mantra that "everything is political." Even as we speak, dozens of political consultants and operatives are calculating away at the impact of the current budget situation on their clients' chances of being elected/re-elected.
President Obama just this week announced officially that he is running for re-election. It cannot have escaped his and his advisers' attention that his actions in this budget/shutdown situation could recalibrate in some fashion how he is viewed by the American people. In other words, it could affect his chances of being re-elected.
Similarly, there is a large pool of Republican presidential candidates out there, most still not officially running, who are seeing how this situation could affect them. Plus, Republican leaders are no doubt pondering the implications of whatever they do for the House and Senate primaries next year -- primaries in which smaller numbers of voters who have strong views on cutting government spending (i.e., Tea Partiers) can have a major impact.
Dire situations and emergencies create political opportunities. It has not escaped the attention of those involved here that President Clinton is widely considered to have benefited from the last big shutdown in the federal government that occurred in 1995-1996.
Our data show that Obama gets slightly more positive credit than the Republicans in terms of handling the federal budget standoff. But this is a fluid situation. The long-term political outcomes will probably take a while to develop and to show up.
We don't see a lot of change in President Obama's job approval rating over the last several days. It remains in the 45% to 50% range in which it has generally operated for months now. We know that Americans' opinions of the Democrats and Republicans in Congress remain low. We will have an update on Congress job approval this weekend.
But it's possible that Americans are becoming more negative about any element of the government we put in front of them at this point. We will find out.