A panel of American voters from all parties gave their live reactions to the president Donald Trump‘s comments on the ongoing partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security during his State of the Union address Tuesday evening.
The panel, assembled by polling firm Maslansky & Partners, consisted of 29 Democrats, 30 independents and 40 Republicans. Their live reactions to Trump’s comments were shown as lines on a graph, with high values representing positive reactions and low values representing negative reactions.
Reactions from the Democrats were represented in blue, the Republicans in red and the independents in yellow.
Republicans and Democrats immediately took on their partisan roles when Trump accused Democratic lawmakers of cutting off funding to DHS, with Republican Party support soaring and Democrats falling well below 50%. Independents, however, hovered in the neutral zone.
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“Right now, Democrats in this House have done that stop all funding for the Department of Homeland Security. It’s all cut off. It’s all shut down,” Trump said during this segment. “They’ve instituted another Democratic shutdown. The first cost us two points on the GPD.”
Independent support rose more than 50% as Trump announced he was demanding ‘the full and immediate restoration of all funding to the U.S.’ border securitydomestic security of the United States.”
The segment ended with Trump calling on lawmakers to reaffirm that their first duty is “to protect American citizens and not illegal aliens.”
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Both Republican Party and independent support rose to all-time highs during that last comment, while Democrats were near all-time lows.
The overall finding from the Maslansky poll was that the speech largely reinforced, rather than persuaded, existing beliefs for all voters.
“There was almost no evidence of movement. Instead, voters expressed either strong affirmation or strong rejection,” the group said in a statement.
“It has not softened the opposition. It has not significantly increased its appeal. But in a turnout-driven environment, strengthening may be the point,” the statement continued.
