It will shock you how much this shutdown never happened

Voters have short memories

Try again next week. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Staff via Getty Images)

Heading into the government shutdown, conventional wisdom said that Democrats were playing a dangerous game. When Washington shuts off its lights, voters tend to blame the uncooperative opposition, the thinking went, and so the party’s decision to block federal funding could come back to haunt it politically.

“The Democrats are now in danger of looking like they’re the ones that are causing the pain,” CNN talking head and former Bush appointee Scott Jennings said the day before the shutdown. Matt Glassman, a fellow at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute and well-known liberal Substacker, warned earlier in September that “you really can’t find a party that caused a strategic shutdown and came out politically better off on the other side of it.”

Those takes were questionable then and look even worse now. So far, polls mostly suggest voters are actually siding with the Democrats. But if history is a guide, the government shutdown won’t even be a blip in the public’s memory by the 2026 midterms, anyway. More likely than not, this game of chicken simply won’t matter come next November.

It’s true that voters don’t want a shutdown. It’s also true that Senate Democrats are refusing to provide the seven votes necessary to pass a government funding bill in the chamber. But in poll after poll so far, voters are blaming Trump and the Republicans for the impasse.

So much for prebaked expectations. But is it that much of a surprise that voters pin the blame for governing on the party that has a trifecta?

Now, it’s not all doom for Republicans here. A Morning Consult survey Monday suggested that while Democrats may enjoy an advantage right now, voters are also shifting blame toward them as time goes on. If the clock keeps ticking and a deal isn’t forthcoming, the numbers could get hairier for Chuck Schumer and company.

But no matter what the polls show a week or a month from now, the shutdown is unlikely to move any votes in 2026. Americans’ memories are short, and shutdowns are quickly forgotten. Consider this: In each of the three previous shutdowns this century, there was no lasting impact that you could detect in public opinion. None. Zilch. If anything, the polling average one month following the shutdown was actually better for the opposition party than the numbers immediately preceding the 2013 and 2018/2019 shutdowns.