By John A. Tures, Professor of Political Science, LaGrange College

Since the government shutdown began on October 1, there’s been a debate about who is “winning” the government shutdown, with “points” given to the party doing better in the surveys. Less attention is given as to why one party is doing better than another, but such lessons are critical for the upcoming 2025 election, the midterms, and the next presidential election.

Like it or not, the Democrats have been the party which has struggled with messaging. They either focus on a scattershot approach (Harris 2024, Kerry 2004) or vague appeals (Clinton 2016, Gore 2000). Democrats themselves blame the “center-left” focus, but every one of these losing efforts (2000, 2004, 2016, 2024) netted far more votes than their “rally the left” results from the disastrous elections of 1972, 1980, 1984, and 1988, when the Electoral College sum of all of these four elections would not equal what Kamala Harris won last year. It’s not about ideology, it’s about messaging for the Democratic Party.

Yet the Democrats, with their focus on health care subsidies in this shutdown debate, have the initial lead in the polls. More voters are blaming President Trump and the Republicans in Congress for the shutdown, even though it is the Senate filibuster that’s technically the hold-up.

The Republicans started out on the wrong foot in this debate. They began with the usual “let’s tie everything to illegal immigration” tactic, an attempt to replicate Trump’s win in 2024 by blaming foreigners for pet disappearances. They even amplified this demonstrably misleading claim with memes trying to show Democrats with sombreros and mustaches. While some Republicans, like VP J. D. Vance, insist they were just having a little fun with a troubling moment in America, it heavily contributed to greater public support for Democrats in the debate by double-digit margins. Republicans in Congress under Senate Majority Leader John Thune have acted more seriously, trying for compromises, bringing Republicans’ survey deficit down to single digits (here’s the evidence, despite the misleading headline). Perhaps they are reading surveys showing that roughly two-thirds of Americans would prefer a compromise and end to the shutdown in favor of fighting for principles, according to a YouGov poll.

An AP article revealed that even though a Republican voter doesn’t want his health care insurance premiums to go up, he blamed both parties equally. “But the poll suggests that health care could be a helpful issue for Democrats down the road. The poll found that 38% of Americans trust Democrats to do a better job handling health care, while only 25% trust Republicans more. About 1 in 10 trust both equally, and 25% trust neither,” wrote Joey Cappellietti and Linley Sanders about the NORC poll. It shows that despite the lead, Democrats still must continue to explain how their position will help people, and not just rely on the public to understand what will happen if those subsidies disappear.

Another government shutdown issue is what will happen to the government workers after the shutdown. A YouGov poll shows the public strongly supports the Democratic Party position that the workers need to be compensated for their lost revenue, by wide margins. Many of these workers are at their posts, without pay, doing their job, and the party needs this to be contrasted with GOP quotes less supportive of back pay for Federal workers.

A number of Democratic sites seem to be more enamored with memes, as well as excitement over protesters wearing frog and dinosaur costumes to show the nature of protests against ICE, and are less focused on why the shutdown is occurring and what’s at stake. Rather than ape MAGA insults and memes, the party needs to show how its parliamentary tactics and positions are more helpful for the average American, not just their party base.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu or on “X” at @johntures2. His first book “Branded” will be coming out this Fall, published by Huntsville Independent Press (https://www.huntsvilleindependent.com/).