A second poll today finds that most Americans want a budget shutdown compromise and — like the NBC/Wall Street Journal polls written about here earlier — many Republicans are against one. A new Gallup Poll shows the dilemma facing House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican bigwigs who don’t want to see their party lose independent swing voters in 2012:
With Congress facing a midnight Friday deadline to pass a federal budget before a partial government shutdown occurs, a new Gallup poll finds Americans rooting for a deal. By 58% to 33%, more Americans want government leaders who share their views on the budget to back a compromise and avert a shutdown rather than hold out for a budget they agree with.
Gallup notes that these are the same findings as in February and adds:
The difficulty for House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders is that rank-and-file Republicans’ views on this question are starkly different from those of the public at large. The slight majority of Republicans nationwide, 51%, want the people in government who share their views to hold out for a budget they agree with rather than compromise. This compares with 27% of Democrats and 29% of independents who say the same.
In other words: a stark choice awaits House Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans who dream of holding onto the House and picking up the Senate and Oval Office in 2012: they are outside of the mainstream, according to two polls.
Additionally, Obama and the Dems do somewhat better than the Republicans when polled on that question:
The same poll finds that slightly more Americans believe President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress are doing the better job on the budget dealings than say the Republicans in Congress are, 41% to 34%.
The irony: the poll also finds that Americans are more sympathetic with the Republicans’ desire to cut than the Democratic desire to avoid cuts:
Despite Americans’ preference for Obama’s and the Democrats’ handling of the budget dealings, and their penchant for compromise, their appetite for spending cuts is a bit more in line with the Republicans’ proposals rather than the Democrats’.
According to the new poll, 45% of Americans believe the budget proposals made by Obama and the Democrats do not go far enough in cutting federal spending. By contrast, significantly fewer, 32%, believe the Republicans’ proposals go too far. These figures, essentially the same as in February, represent the percentage of Americans agreeing with the criticisms each party is leveling against the other.
What does this suggest? A case of alienating potential supporters by overreach.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.