Claim: 27 percent of voters said Democrats should shut down the government if their demands are not met

Question

Ahead of a looming government shutdown, just 27 percent of voters said Democrats should shut down the government if their demands are not met, while 65 percent said they should not. Even among their own party’s voters, Democrats in Congress enjoy only 5 percent net support for their planned funding gambit.

If the government does shut down — an all but certain outcome following an unfruitful meeting between Trump and congressional leaders on Monday — voters said they would be most likely to blame both parties. More voters said they would likely blame Republicans than Democrats (26 percent to 19 percent, respectively), but independents in particular were twice as likely to say Republicans would be to blame, not Democrats.

Answer 1

The claim says that only 27% of voters think Democrats should shut down the government if they don’t get what they want, and that even among Democrats there’s just 5% more support than opposition. When I looked into this, I found it came from a Breitbart article that used a Rasmussen Reports poll from September 2023. Rasmussen isn’t the most reliable source, as FiveThirtyEight gives them a C+ rating and says their polls tend to lean Republican. The way the question was asked in the poll also seems biased since it said “shut down the government if they don’t get their way,” which makes Democrats sound unreasonable. Other polls from Morning Consult and Pew Research Center taken around the same time showed different results. They found that more voters would blame Republicans for a shutdown, not Democrats. None of them had numbers close to “27% vs 65%. Because this claim only uses one biased poll and leaves out other data, it gives a misleading picture of what people actually think, making my verdict that this claim is mostly fake. 

Sources:
Rasmussen Reports (Sept. 2023)
Morning Consult, “Government Funding Poll” (Sept. 2023)
Pew Research Center
FiveThirtyEight Pollster Ratings

Comments

I've never heard of FiveThirtyEight Pollster Ratings, that's a really helpful and interesting site to take note of in the future. I'm curious, though, what they say about the polls from Morning Consult and Pew Research Center that you referenced to back your answer? It might be helpful to note that they receive a better rating compared to Rasmussen's C+, with a lean towards Republican.