Democrats think they’re winning. That means a longer government shutdown

Polls show that voters blame Republicans for the shutdown a little bit more than they blame Democrats. Only in Washington is that "winning."

Democrats feel like they’re enjoying a rare bit of political momentum as polls roll in during the second week of the government shutdown that began October 1.

A variety of polls show that voters blame Republicans a little more than they blame Democrats for the shutdown. In political America, you’re winning if people hate the other guy more than they hate you. So the political tabloids teem with horse-race headlines about Democrats “winning the shutdown fight” and proving their critics wrong.

This is a weird form of winning. The shutdown is still on. Republicans haven’t agreed to any of the Democrats’ demands, the most important one being the extension of health care subsidies due to expire at the end of 2025. Maybe the Democrats are so beleaguered that if they don’t collapse in the opening round of a bout, it’s cause for celebration.

But for many ordinary Americans, the shutdown is becoming a real-world nuisance. For federal workers who will start missing paychecks, hardship looms. Investors are making decisions without important government data. All of this will get worse if Democrats misinterpret a modest edge in polling as some kind of public mandate to keep the shutdown going—which it is not.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

The most widespread effect of the shutdown so far is a sort of sick-out among air traffic controllers who seem to be protesting the shabby treatment they’re getting from their political bosses. Who can blame them? All members of Congress get paid during a shutdown, but air traffic controllers are supposed to work for free until the shutdown ends and Congress covers their back pay. So some are calling in sick, exacerbating an existing shortage and causing worse delays than usual at dozens of airports.

[How much do you know about government shutdowns? Take my quiz to find out!]

The Labor Dept. has already delayed the October 3 jobs report and will probably hold back the October 15 inflation report and several other releases. There are other data sources, but government reports are typically the most widely followed and they provide a common baseline for investors and policymakers. The backlog caused by the shutdown is obscuring visibility into the basics of the economy.

Furloughed federal workers are just faceless “bureaucrats” to many Americans, but they do have spending power that’s now on hold, and, oh yeah, they perform services that happen to be important to some people. The shutdown can disrupt aid programs, taxpayer services, government contracting with hundreds of small businesses, and many other things. This will grow from an irritant to an outrage for affected people, as the shutdown drags on.

And Democrats now have justification to drag it out, alas. A political-action-committee linked with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has reportedly advised him that the shutdown is working as a way to emphasize Democrats’ commitment to safeguarding health care. In that research, a majority of poll respondents supposedly say it’s worth shutting down the government to fight for health care.

So Schumer, the best leader the Democrats can muster at the moment, will probably soldier on. “For Schumer, there’s no incentive to fold early,” Beacon Policy Advisors explained in an October 8 analysis. “The longer Schumer holds out, the better off he is in the eyes of the Democratic base, members of which remain eager for a fight.”

It’s probably helping Democrats that Trump is skulking around the federal bureaucracy like a bloodthirsty grim reaper, threatening to fire thousands of workers furloughed through no fault of their own. Democrats are talking about health care and Trump is talking about firing people. If you only pick up a sound bite or two, Democrats sound better.

The whole Democratic strategy here is to gain traction on health care as a kitchen-table issue that will help them retake control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. But shutting down the government isn’t the only way to do that. The government funding bills expired at the end of September, but the health care subsidies don’t expire till the end of December. Congress could still extend them through separate legislation, which Henrietta Treyz of research firm Veda Partners thinks is 75% likely.

So Democrats are fighting for health care by shutting down the government, when they could be doing it without shutting down the government. And now they’re citing polls that justify their tactics. But they’re not asking voters about any alternative tactics.

Polls can be misleading if they frame questions as false choices, which the shutdown polls may be doing. They’re not asking people if the Democrats should push for health care by shutting down the government or by doing it some other way. They take the shutdown as a given—which it isn’t—then ask who’s more responsible. If people blame Republicans more than Democrats, that it not the same as Americans saying, yeah, we’re glad the Democrats have shut down the government.

It may not even benefit the minority party in the long run. There have been more than 20 shutdowns during the last 50 years, and the responsible party almost never benefits. “This particular shutdown, however it resolves, is highly unlikely to be a significant issue in next year’s midterms,” Kyle Kondik of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics wrote on October 1. He cites research showing that the party usually causing a shutdown almost always folds with little to show for it.

Yet Democrats need a victory, after the wipeout they suffered in the 2024 elections. So maybe they’re talking themselves into one. The shutdown represents no victory for voters, though, and you can’t change that by asking them the questions you want them to answer.