President Donald Trump has worked to blame Democrats for the government shutdown, but a majority of Americans are unconvinced that it’s Democrats’ fault.
Trump’s administration has used the levers of the state to communicate partisan messages during the shutdown, which ended November 13. Ultimately, however, messaging through government channels like web design, out-of-office email replies, and public service announcements weren’t enough.
A 52% majority of Americans blame Trump or Republican lawmakers for the shutdown, according to a poll this week from Stack Data Strategy, a London market research firm.
That’s in line with an NBC News poll last month that found 52% blamed Trump and Republican lawmakers. And a YouGov poll released last week found more voters rate how Democrats in Congress handled the shutdown slightly better than Trump or Republicans in Congress. These are slim majorities, but they also show the limits of Trump’s influence over public opinion when it comes to the shutdown.
“Nobody wins in a shutdown,” Kenneth Cosgrove, a professor in the department of political science and legal studies at Suffolk University, tells Fast Company in an email. “The question is which party gets more of the blame? Traditionally it’s been Congress just because of the media and marketing advantages the executive branch has.”
But Trump himself hasn’t been fully engaged with ending the shutdown as his attention has been split between other efforts, including trips abroad to the Middle East and Asia, and overseeing his White House renovation project.
Trump “wasn’t very visible,” during the shutdown, Cosgrove says. “Plus, how many people look at government websites on a regular basis? Probably not that many.”
Most people aren’t browsing the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) website, where a bright red banner for the duration of the shutdown said “The Radical Left in Congress shut down the government.” And because major airports refused to air a video filmed with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for the shutdown, many travelers didn’t see it even as they spent extra hours at the airport due to delays and cancellations.
With any political messaging, there are two important questions: “How many people actually saw or heard the message, and what else were they seeing or hearing?” says Yana Krupnikov, a professor of communications and media at the University of Michigan.
“The information environment around us is so full—yes, we have messages on websites and out-of-office emails, but we also have news coverage from various sources, and we have people on social media. People also talk to each other,” Krupnikov says.
It’s also not as if Democrats come out of the shutdown unscathed. The deal to reopen the government came from a handful of Senate Democrats who crossed party lines. The resulting deal doesn’t include Affordable Care Act subsidies, meaning millions of Americans’ health insurance premiums are expected to go up. The deal to reopen the government is unpopular with many Democratic lawmakers, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Murphy of Connecticut.
Still, it turns out tearing down the East Wing draws more attention than a Department of Education OOO message ever could, and SNAP cuts and canceled flights resonate more deeply with the public than a White House website shutdown countdown clock blaming Democrats. In a busy news environment, it’s hard to break through, even for Trump.