53 percent of Americans say GOP would be at fault if a fiscal cliff compromise is not reached. Poll: Blame GOP for cliff diving

Americans are prepared to blame Congressional Republicans any failure to avert the fiscal cliff, according to a poll on Tuesday.

While 51 percent of Americans don’t expect a deal, Democrats have substantially more faith than Republicans in the ability of President Barack Obama and Congressional Republicans to compromise, according to the Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll. Two-thirds of Republicans aren’t anticipating a deal, and only a quarter expect one. But a plurality of Democrats — 47 percent to 40 percent — expect Obama and the GOP to reach an agreement.


Congressional Republicans are likely to face the blame for any impact: 53 percent of Americans said the GOP would be at fault, compared with 29 percent who said the same of the president. Ten percent said both would be to blame. The gap is even bigger among independent voters, only 23 percent of whom would blame the president.

The fiscal cliff would amount to a giant removal of cash from the economy. On Jan. 1, 2013, The Bush-era tax cuts would expire, along with a payroll tax cut introduced by the 2009 stimulus bill. At the same time, spending cuts agreed to in August 2011 as part of the debt-limit deal would slash almost $1.2 trillion in defense and domestic spending over the next decade. The CBO projects unemployment could raise to 9.1 percent if the country plunges over the cliff.

While 68 percent of Americans think it will have a major impact on the American economy, a significantly smaller number — 44 percent — expect it to have a major impact on their own personal financial situation. Sixty-two percent expect the impact on the economy to be mostly negative, while 20 percent think the impact will be positive.

The poll of 1,000 Americans was conducted from Nov. 8-11 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points.