A majority of voters, 55 percent, say a wall along the border with Mexico is not important enough to shut down the government, according to a POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. | Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images POLITICO/Morning Consult Poll Poll: Voters would blame Trump, GOP for shutdown The president ends the year with an approval rating of 41 percent.

If parts of the federal government shut down later this week, most voters will blame President Donald Trump and Republicans over Democratic minorities in Congress, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.

The holiday brinkmanship in Washington comes as the government must approve a series of spending bills to stay open past Friday. But Trump is feuding with Congress over the $5 billion he wants to fund construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. While Republicans control both chambers in Congress, any spending bill will require 60 votes in the Senate, where there are currently only 51 Republicans.


Tuesday brought some softening in the White House’s position, though a path to approving the must-pass spending bills was still unclear.

Forcing a shutdown over border-wall funding would put Trump crosswise with public opinion, the POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows. A majority of voters, 55 percent, say a wall along the border with Mexico is not important enough to shut down the government — far greater than the 31 percent who say it is important enough, the poll shows.

There is some appetite among Trump’s base — 60 percent of GOP voters say a wall is important enough to warrant a shutdown, while 30 percent say it isn’t — for a fight over the wall, but both Democrats and independents are opposed by ratios of more than two to one.

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In general, voters oppose shutting down the government to extract policy goals. Roughly one in five voters say presidents and Congress should use a lapse in government funding to achieve their policy goals, while just under two-thirds say they should achieve their policy goals another way.

Forty-one percent of voters say that if the government does shut down, they will blame Trump, while another 10 percent will blame Republicans in Congress. Just three in 10, 31 percent, would blame Democrats in Congress, and 18 percent have no opinion.

GOP voters would have Trump’s back, according to Tyler Sinclair, Morning Consult’s vice president. “If a shutdown occurs, two-thirds of Republicans (66%) would blame congressional Democrats, while just 20 percent would blame President Trump and congressional Republicans,” he said.

But Trump and Republicans would get the lion’s share of the blame from others, including independents. Roughly half of independent voters, 49 percent, would blame Trump or congressional Republicans, while only 22 percent would blame Democrats in Congress.

While a partial government shutdown might not be an earth-shattering political event for Trump, it would frame a tumultuous 2018 that saw continued economic growth at home and relative peace abroad — even as his party got drubbed in the midterm elections and scandals continue to swirl around his administration.

The POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows Trump closing out the year with a 41 percent approval rating — near the low end of a narrow range for all of 2018. Trump’s high-water mark for the year, 47 percent, came in late January and early February. His lowest approval rating in 2018, 40 percent, came in September.

The new survey shows a majority of voters, 55 percent, disapprove of Trump’s job performance.

The poll was conducted Dec. 14-16, just days after Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to a number of crimes, including violating campaign-finance laws during Trump’s 2016 presidential bid. Asked whether Cohen was telling the truth when he said he broke campaign-finance laws at Trump’s direction, a plurality of voters, 45 percent, say Cohen was telling the truth, while 26 percent say he wasn’t. Nearly three in 10 voters, 29 percent, say they aren’t sure whether Cohen is telling the truth.

A similar plurality, 45 percent, say they think Trump’s campaign worked with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Fewer voters, 36 percent, say they don’t think the Trump campaign worked with Russia, while 20 percent aren’t sure.

Slightly more voters, 48 percent, say they think Trump “has tried to impede or obstruct” the Russia investigation — greater than the 33 percent who say they don’t think he has tried to do that. But 19 percent of voters aren’t sure.

But as Democrats prepare to take control of the House early next month, only 38 percent of voters say Congress should begin impeachment proceedings to remove Trump from office — fewer than the 43 percent who say Congress should not begin the process of impeaching him. Around two in 10, 19 percent, aren’t sure.

The poll surveyed 1,944 registered voters and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides data-driven research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy.

More details on the poll and its methodology can be found in these two documents — Toplines: https://politi.co/2QEhC7Y | Crosstabs: https://politi.co/2Rbokln