The vast majority of Americans believe the government shutdown is hurting the country, and more than a third think it's hurting their own families, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.
According to the new poll, 73 percent of Americans think that the government shutdown is hurting the country (including 50 percent who said it's hurting the country a lot), while only 12 percent said it's making no difference. Nine percent said it's helping the country.
Americans in the new poll were more likely to think the shutdown is harmful to the economy than they were before the shutdown began. Sixty-eight percent of respondents in the new poll said that the shutdown is hurting the economy, while 19 percent said it makes no difference and 8 percent said it's helping. In another HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted before the shutdown began, 57 percent said they thought a possible shutdown would hurt the economy.
Other recent polls have also found major worries over the shutdown's impact. In a Pew Research Center poll released Monday, 48 percent of Americans said they're "very concerned" about the shutdown's economic impact, and another 29 percent said they're somewhat concerned. A CNN poll also released Monday found that 49 percent of people think the shutdown has caused major problems, and another 8 percent think it's a full-blown crisis.
In the HuffPost/YouGov poll, many respondents said the shutdown is having an impact on their own families. Thirty-eight percent said that the shutdown is hurting them or their families -- including 14 percent who said it was hurting a lot -- while 49 percent said it's making no difference. A smaller number, 18 percent, said that they have been personally affected by the shutdown.
In the Pew Research Center poll released Monday, 28 percent said they've been personally inconvenienced by the shutdown. More than half of that group said it had been a major inconvenience, according to the poll.
Although a majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents in the HuffPost/YouGov poll all said that the shutdown is hurting the country, the survey found Republicans were less likely both to say that it is hurting the economy and to think that any harm is major.
Overall, 85 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of independents and 59 percent of Republicans said that they think the shutdown is hurting the country, the poll found. Only 35 percent of Republicans said that the shutdown is hurting the country "a lot," compared to 62 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independents.
The HuffPost/YouGov poll was conducted Oct. 2-3 among 1,000 U.S. adults using a sample selected from YouGov's opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population. Factors considered include age, race, gender, education, employment, income, marital status, number of children, voter registration, time and location of Internet access, interest in politics, religion and church attendance.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov's nationally representative opinion polling.
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