Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi relied heavily upon the slanted media coverage to bolster her “No” position to all negotiations on border security during the lengthy partial government shutdown.
But recent polling suggests that Pelosi’s plan may not have worked out quite as well as she hoped. President Donald Trump’s approval numbers remained steady — and Pelosi’s took a sharp turn for the worse, dropping six points during the shutdown.
Pelosi’s net negative rating of -19
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll for January was conducted over a three-day period near the end of the shutdown.
Pelosi was viewed positively by 28 percent of respondents and negatively by 47 percent, giving her a negative net approval of -19 points.
In comparison, Trump had a positive rating of 39 percent and a negative rating of 51, for a net approval of -12 points, a smaller negative margin than Pelosi.
“Very negative” view increases
A closer look at Pelosi’s numbers reveals that her 28 percent positive approval was broken down into 11 percent who had a “very positive” view and 17 percent who held a “somewhat positive” view. Meanwhile, her 47 percent negative rating broke down as 13 percent “somewhat negative” and a whopping 34 percent “very negative.”
That “very negative” figure is the one that should have Pelosi worried, as it was 6 points higher than the 28 percent “very negative” rating Pelosi had in the same poll in December.
Furthermore, considering her positive numbers shifted by only a mere point, the big jump seems to have come from those who counted themselves as “neutral” toward Pelosi — 22 percent in December as compared to only 17 percent in January.
In comparison to Trump over the same period of December to January, the president actually saw a slight increase in his “very positive” rating — from 24 up to 27 percent — while all other metrics shifted by a mere point or two and his “very negative” rating of 43 percent remained unchanged.
Blame not entirely Trump’s
Separately, a new Rasmussen poll looked at who was most to blame for the lengthy government shutdown. While Pelosi’s Democratic Party and allies in the liberal media worked overtime to heap all of the blame for the disruption on the president, polled voters spread the blame around.
While 55 percent of likely voters blamed Trump for the shutdown, another 40 percent blamed the Democrats.
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Pelosi’s game plan during the shutdown was simply to refuse all offers to negotiate and wait everything out until Trump “caved,” confident as she was that she would be supported in that gambit by the media. But her “win” isn’t so sweet.
While Trump did agree to reopen the government, he says he’s still committed to building the wall — with or without Dem support. And based on this poll, the shutdown surprisingly did more damage to Pelosi than it did Trump.