Oof! Wanna know how bad the GOP’s image is following the shutdown? This chart is a perfect example.
Look at the trends in the generic Congressional Ballot for the Republican and Democratic parties following the shutdown. It’s not hard to see which direction public opinion is headed.
The Washington Post’s Chris Cilizza offers some perspective:
Now, the generic ballot — as we have noted in this space many times before — isn’t a foolproof measure of who will win and who will lose, particularly more than a year before the midterm elections. But, it is a generally accurate indicator of which way the national political winds are blowing (to borrow a phrase from Fix mentor Charlie Cook). And, the winds over the past few months — the time when talk of defunding Obamacare, shutting down the government and bumping up against the debt ceiling began to dominate Washington — have been blowing strongly behind Democrats (or in Republicans’ face depending on your perspective).
That’s stark evidence — just in case you needed any more — of the political problem Republicans created for themselves with the shutdown. As we have said before, the best news for Republicans in all of this is that it is October 2013 not October 2014. The national political winds are blowing in their faces today, but that can certainly change before next November.
