We are about two days into the latest government shutdown in the United States, with both sides seemingly not overly interested in trying to move negotiations forward. While there are many more important concerns in these situations than tracking how the political winds are blowing, the biggest motivators in these situations tend to be from the side that feels that they are going to pay a political price for their stance. 

Currently, there is a bit of a pox on all of your houses situation happening. When asked to allocate blame across the three lead players, Americans (on average) give Democrats in Congress 39.5% of the blame, followed by President Trump with 33.6%, and Republicans in Congress with 25.92%. Depending on how you want to look at this, it is either worse for Democrats, since they have the highest concentration of blame, or it is worse for Republicans, since combined they receive 59% of the blame.

Regardless of how you view the overall numbers, the last week has been the worst for President Trump, whose portion of the blame started at 29% and has been ticking up ever since. Meanwhile, both Congressional Democrats (about a 1.5 point drop) and Congressional Republicans (a 1.8 point drop) have been heading in the opposite direction. 

We will be updating this chart daily on our website throughout the shutdown. 

Here are the key takeaways from this week’s chart:

• 😮‼️Shockingly, Partisanship affects these numbers: Sarcasm aside, the fact that Democratic voters blame Trump (52%) and Republican voters blame Democrats (69%) is not shocking, but it is interesting to see that neither views it as just a one-party problem. Republican voters put 30% of the blame on Republicans in Congress and Trump (5 points higher for Trump), and Democratic voters place 10% of the blame on Democrats in Congress. 
• 🚺➕➖Women have moved the most over the past week: A week ago, women placed 40% of the blame on Democrats and 30% on Trump. As of yesterday (October 1st), the blame for Democrats dropped to 32%, while the blame for Trump rose to 38%. Republicans stayed relatively steady among this cohort, moving from 30% to 28%. 
• ➗Views on Democrats are the most divided: Looking at the distribution of responses versus just the averages, there is an interesting spread when it comes to how much blame should be placed at the feet of Democrats. Nearly 1 in 3 Americans (27%) place 80% or more of the blame on Democrats, which is more than double the number of those who feel the same way about President Trump (13%). At the same time, a majority of Americans (53%) place just about none of the blame on Democrats (0-20%), which is also 5 points higher than the concentration that feels the same way about the President, and 8 points higher than Republicans in Congress.