Most Democrats want party to mainly focus on stopping GOP agenda: Survey
Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in a new poll say they want the party to focus on pushing back on the Republican agenda — not on working across the aisle.
In the CNN survey released Sunday, a majority — 57 percent — of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they want the party to work to stop the Republican agenda, while 42 percent say they want it to work with the GOP.
The survey comes amid much discussion in Democratic circles about the best way to push back against the Republican Party, which controls the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time since the start of President Trump’s first stint in the Oval Office.
Compared to a survey taken in September, 2017, Democrats are now signaling they have more of an appetite for a fight.
Nearly eight years ago, approximately three-quarters, 74 percent, of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they want the party to work with the Republicans, while only 23 percent wanted it to work to stop the GOP agenda.
Democrats have also soured on their party’s leadership since the earlier survey, when 52 percent said leadership was taking it in the right direction and 36 percent disagreed.
Meanwhile, 52 percent in the new survey say leadership is taking the party in the wrong direction and 48 percent say the right direction.
The latest poll also shows the Democratic Party with record-low favorability. Only 29 percent of all respondents have a favorable view of it, while 54 percent have an unfavorable opinion.
That represents a shift from early January, before Trump was sworn into office for the second time, when 48 percent of survey respondents said they had an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party, and 33 percent said they had a favorable opinion.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party’s favorability rating currently remains unchanged from January, at 36 percent, while its unfavorability rating has ticked up from 44 percent in January to 48 percent in the March survey.
The GOP’s record-low favorability came in September 2017, when 29 percent of the public had a favorable opinion of the Republican Party and 62 percent had an unfavorable opinion.
The new survey, conducted on March 6-9, included 1,206 respondents and has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.