Dem
47
GOP
53
Yesterday, the Senate spent all day holding a vote-a-rama on various amendments to the Donald Trump budget bill, and also engaging in horse trading and sausage making. They will be back at it today.
There was a lot of coverage of the various deals being struck. For example, it appears that the vote of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) has been secured via a provision that will allow for up to $50,000 in deductions for whaling-related expenses, up from the current (paltry) $10,000. This will surely please Captain Ahab; maybe he'll finally have enough cash to get that white whale he's been after.
There is also a lot of grousing from budget hawks in the House, who say that the bill currently under construction in the Senate is unacceptable to them, and they just won't be able to vote for it. We will believe that when we see it.
In any event, as we have written many times, the information that's floating around right now is not especially useful, because anything and everything could change by the time the final bill is passed. There is one thing that is not likely to change, however, and that is how voters feel about the bill. Someone who is unhappy about $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid is not likely to feel better if it ends up as only $600 billion in cuts. And someone who doesn't think millionaires and billionaires should see their household income increase by 4% thanks to tax cuts is not likely to be pacified if it turns out to be only 2.5%.
This being the case, we thought the most useful thing we could do when it comes to the budget—i.e., the dominant news story of the day yesterday—is take a look at the polling. In short, it's not good for the Republicans. Here's a rundown of all the budget-related polls we could find that were taken since the Senate got to work on May 22:
| Pollster | Rep. App. | Rep. Dis. | Rep. Net | Ind. App. | Ind. Dis. | Ind. Net | Dem. App. | Dem. Dis. | Dem. Net | Tot. App. | Tot. Dis. | Tot. Net |
| Quinnipiac | 67% | 10% | +57% | 20% | 57% | -37% | 2% | 89% | -87% | 27% | 53% | -26% |
| Washington Post/Ipsos | 49% | 13% | +36% | 17% | 40% | -23% | 6% | 74% | -68% | 23% | 42% | -19% |
| KFF | 61% | 36% | +25% | 27% | 71% | -44% | 13% | 85% | -72% | 35% | 64% | -29% |
| Pew Research | 56% | 19% | +37% | N/A | N/A | N/A | 5% | 80% | -75% | 29% | 49% | -20% |
| Fox | 73% | 23% | +50% | 22% | 73% | -51% | 10% | 89% | -79% | 38% | 59% | -21% |
There's some variance between numbers, based primarily on how the questions were asked. However, there are two themes that come through loud and clear. First, Democrats hate the bill much more than Republicans like it. If the bill is going to get people to the polls during the midterms, those people are going to be disproportionately Democrats. Second, independents definitely do not like the bill. These folks, of course, are the swing voters. And if swing voters decide to punish the members of Congress for the bill (since, after all, Trump will not be on the ballot), that could affect dozens of House races, and a number of Senate races.
That said, we would not be doing our job if we did not note that there are many bills that are unpopular (or somewhat unpopular) while the sausage is being made, but that get more popular once the bill is a done deal. This was the case with the Social Security Act, it was the case with the Civil Rights Act, it was the case with the Affordable Care Act, and it was the case with dozens of other pieces of legislation. So, it could happen that by the time the elections roll around next year, the numbers here won't be so grim for the GOP.
However, we doubt it. All of the above bills (not to mention many others that became more popular over time) actually helped a lot of people. When a person's life improves due to legislation, that can take some of the frost off their opinion. But we struggle to come up with a plausible theory as to how the big, beautiful budget bill will improve the lives of sizable numbers of people who currently oppose the bill. We suppose that if the bill unleashes the massive wave of prosperity that Republicans promise it will, then that might win some converts. But do you actually think that prosperity will happen? Yeah, neither do we.
There are also a couple of other objections to "but the bill might get more popular!" First, partisanship is much higher right now than in most other historical eras. The Democrats who hate the bill also hate Trump, and it's hard to imagine that ANY level of prosperity would be enough to change that. Second, the timeline on which opinions evolve tends to be a long one. It took years for the SSA to become really popular, or for the CRA to achieve wide acceptance. It took more than a decade for the ACA to have broad support among Americans. Assuming the Republicans pass the BBB sometime this month, they'll have less than 18 months to try to improve public opinion of the bill. And that will be while Democrats are screaming to the heavens about the evils of the legislation.
In short, we're not seeing a viable path by which the BBB is getting better numbers in November 2026 than it's getting right now. On the other hand, we can absolutely see a path by which the numbers get worse. If you look at the polls above, you can see that every one of them recorded some sizable number of respondents who said "No opinion" or "I don't know." If, in a few months, a person (or their friends/relatives) were to lose their health insurance, or if their kids (or their friends' kids or their relatives' kids) all of a sudden weren't getting SNAP assistance, or if the economy were to enter into a full-blown recession, a lot of those "No opinion" or "I don't know" folks are suddenly going to have an opinion and are suddenly going to know. And the conclusions they reach are not likely to be favorable to the red team.
In short, our guess would have been that the Republicans are playing with fire here. And now, the numbers would seem to back that up. Also recall that the last big, beautiful budget bill the Republicans passed with Trump in the White House was in 2017. And in 2018, the GOP did gain two seats in the Senate, but they lost a net of 41 seats in the House, along with a net of 7 governorships. So, there is a track record here in addition to the polling. (Z)