Americans aren’t buying Trump’s shutdown blame game

As Democrats and Republicans trade accusations over which party is responsible for the government shutdown, new polling suggests that President Donald Trump’s efforts to falsely claim—in social media posts, on television, on government agencies’ websites, and in internal directives to federal employees—that Democrats shut down the government because they want to provide “free health care for illegal aliens” are not working.

Nearly half of Americans blame the shutdown on Trump and Republicans in Congress, according to a new nationally representative poll of more than 1,000 Americans, conducted by the Washington Post on Wednesday. Meanwhile, 30 percent said they blame Democrats, and nearly a quarter of respondents said they are unsure of who to blame. Interestingly, eight percent of Republicans blame Trump and the GOP for the shutdown, higher than the two percent of Democrats who blame their own party.

The White House’s claims, of course, are not accurate. Undocumented immigrants are already mostly ineligible for federal health care, and Democrats are seeking to restore access to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies for documented immigrants, including refugees and people granted asylum. The Republican spending bill passed this summer contains the Medicaid cuts, while the ACA subsidies are set to expire at the end of this year under the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022. Yet, Republicans ranging from Trump, to Vice President JD Vance, to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) have made the claim that Democrats shut down the government over efforts to provide health care to undocumented people.

Polls recorded before the shutdown officially started found similar results. An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll of nearly 1,500 people, conducted last week, found that nearly 40 percent of respondents would blame Republicans for the shutdown, compared to only 27 percent who would blame Democrats. Just over thirty percent said they would blame both parties. And a New York Times/Siena poll of more than 1,300 registered voters, conducted last week, found a higher proportion of respondents said they would blame Trump and Republicans than Democrats for a shutdown—26 percent to 19 percent—though about a third said they would blame both parties equally. Just over a fifth of respondents said they had not heard enough to say.

But beyond the fact that Republicans control all three branches of government, it appears as though the substance of their legislative priorities are also unpopular. The same Washington Post poll found that a staggering 71 percent of respondents say that the federal subsidies that reduce the cost of ACA plans scheduled to expire at the end of the year—a sticking point for Democrats in the stalled negotiations that led to the shutdown—should be extended, and nearly half of respondents said Democrats should demand the extension “even if it continues a government shutdown.” When you crunch the numbers, this view makes sense: A KFF analysis found that last year, the subsidies saved enrollees an average of more than $700 last year. And a more recent analysis found that extending the subsidies would save enrollees an average of more than $1,000 in premium payments in 2026.

Democrats, for their part, have leaned on this context as they try to spin the shutdown in their favor. “Republicans shut down the government because they would rather make health care more expensive than keep the government running,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a speech on the Senate floor. “That is literally where we are.”