GOP holds the line on shutdown as Trump approval rises

Though President Donald Trump previously suffered a dip in approval after government shutdowns during his first term, polling data shows him gaining ground despite the current one and Republicans appear bullish.

“In 2018/2019, Donald Trump’s net approval rating was already falling. The shutdown was eating into his popular support. It was down 3 points already at this particular point and would fall considerably more,” CNN’s Harry Enten said in a recent segment on the network.

“This shutdown hasn’t even hit Donald Trump’s support at all. His net approval rating is actually up a point,” he added. “This one is not hurting him at all. There’s no reason Donald Trump might say… ‘I want to get out of this shutdown.’”

Driving some of the difference is a substantial shift in the public’s perception of Trump’s responsibility for the issue. In 2018/2019, for instance, 61% of the public assigned a “great deal” of blame to Trump for the shutdown. In 2025, only 48% did so.

Overall, Trump currently boasts a 45.4% approval rating in the RealClearPolitics polling average, while 51.6% disapprove of him. On Oct. 1, he held a 45.1% approval rating and a 52.8% average disapproval in the same metric. Accordingly, Trump’s net average approval has improved by 1.5% since the shutdown began.

Ostensibly motivating the Democrats in the shutdown is their desire to lower healthcare costs for the average American. Republicans made substantial reforms to Medicaid as part of the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act intended to keep illegal aliens from enrolling in the program. Republicans, for their part, have insisted that the Democrats seek to reverse those reforms, and to help illegal aliens instead of Americans. 

Messaging favors the GOP

Thus far, the messaging war seems to be going in the Republicans’ favor, especially in light of Trump’s own approval surge and the public’s lower inclination to blame him for the shutdown. With that in mind, Republicans seem optimistic that time is on their side.

“I think a lot of people are not awake to the fact that this time, the Democrats are leading the efforts to shut the government down,” Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, said on the Just the News, No Noise television show.

“And when their base recognizes that the government that they love, and they want to expand… that when those people are not only being furloughed, those government workers, those bureaucrats, but they're also being fired by the Trump administration. I think the Democrats, the heat is going to continue to build on the Democrats,” he added.

“Democrats would clearly rather play politics than do right by the American people,” Rep. Rudy Yakym, R-Ind., said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “Let's not forget that Democrats supported short-term CRs 13 times under President Biden and those of us who are Republicans in the House, we voted to keep the government open.”

“You've now got Democrats … they're openly saying that they are okay with withholding paychecks for US troops during their Democrat Chuck Schumer shutdown,” he went on.

The math is in Republicans’ favor

Since the House has already approved the continuing resolution to fund the government, the Senate could end the shutdown by approving the legislation, though the upper chamber would need 60 votes to do so. Though the same rules apply to the Democratic plan, Republicans currently enjoy a 53-47 advantage in that chamber and multiple Democrats have already voted with the GOP to end the shutdown.

“And so we've said many, many times that they just simply need to have five more Democrats come out, walk onto the Senate floor, open the government, and we'll get back to the people's business,” Yakym said. 

“We're doing our part to keep the government open, keep the government funded," he said, and to "continue to move forward, make progress in this country under the leadership of President Trump, and Democrats just want to throw a bit of a temper tantrum.”

Kennedy, for his part, opined that the optics of negotiating a $1.5 trillion deal behind closed doors, as the Democrats propose, would reflect more poorly on the Democrats. The Hill noted that "Some Democrats skeptical about their leadership’s hard-line stance against reopening the federal government privately acknowledge that they fear getting 'hammered' by their liberal base if they vote for a Republican funding bill."

“This is nonsense that a one and a half trillion dollar demand from Chuck Schumer on the other side saying we should just go into a back room. Speaker Johnson just talked to the Congressional Caucus yesterday and said that's what Chuck Schumer wants,” he asserted. “And Speaker Johnson will have none of this. Leader Thune, none of this. President Trump, none of this. And I think we should hold firm.”

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.