The nearly six-week-long government shutdown helped Democrats gain significant ground across the country as voters largely blamed Republicans — the party that fought to end it — for its devastating effects, political analysts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Senate advanced a deal Sunday to end the shutdown, thanks to the newfound support of five Democrats — who broke with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer after voting with him and the vast majority of the party’s caucus 14 consecutive times to prolong the shutdown. Just five days before the group of lawmakers switched their positions, Democratic candidates prevailed in several key races, including in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City.
Republican strategist and former Trump White House official Mike McKenna told the DCNF that the GOP was “getting dinged by the shutdown,” which he called a “winning event” for the Democratic Party. He said that Senate Democrats’ strategy of continuing the shutdown and holding out over expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies was a political ploy that ultimately worked in that party’s favor.
“This was a political thing. The Democrats wanted to draw attention to health care,” McKenna said. “They succeeded. Are we going to have a separate vote on it? We are. Are the Republicans going to win that separate vote? History would tell you no. We don’t win ACA votes.”
The strategist said the deal, which included a promise to hold a vote in the Senate to extend the expiring subsidies, “looks like a victory” for Democrats, who “blunted the Republicans’ momentum” and now have a chance to save the ACA credits.
An NBC News poll conducted in late October and released two days before Election Day, found that a majority of voters, 52%, blamed either President Donald Trump or congressional Republicans for the shutdown while 42% blamed congressional Democrats.
“So, this all made sense for the Democrats,” McKenna told the DCNF. “And folding at this time kind of makes sense too, because it’s sort of like, ‘Look, you know, let’s just sell the stock and put it in the bank and walk away here, right? We’ve had a good run.’”
“If you’re the Democrats, you’re looking at it thinking, you know, having 40 days of the Republicans being a little tangled up and not being able to do stuff congressionally, that’s not a problem. That’s a good thing,” he added. “But as it’s [the shutdown has] gone on, the two issues that have started to really affect people, SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] and the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], it became unsustainable.”
SNAP benefits — which 42 million Americans accept for food assistance — ran dry on Nov. 1, which was 32 days into the shutdown. The FAA announced Friday that it would scale back air travel due to air traffic controllers and Transportation Security Administration agents working without pay during the shutdown. The funding lapse resulted in thousands of flight delays and cancellations as well as the temporary stoppage of traffic at major U.S. airports.
“And you know, the sensible guys of the Democratic Senate Caucus came to the conclusion that, ‘Hey, this has been great. It’s been fun, but if we don’t turn it off now, in about a week, people are going to start blaming us equally,’” McKenna said, adding that the Nov. 4 election was a factor that caused some Democrats to stop holding out.
Kenneth Rapoza, a senior analyst at the Coalition for a Prosperous America, told the DCNF that the Democrats’ shutdown narrative probably helped the party score big wins down the ballot on Nov. 4 in Virginia, a state with a high percentage of federal workers hurt by the funding lapse. He added, however, that the shutdown had a minimal effect on races in other states such as New Jersey and New York.
“I think that in a state like Virginia, the average worker there who’s tied to the government, or knows someone who’s tied to the government, would easily blame Trump for the shutdown,” Rapoza said. “I don’t think that would be the case in New Jersey or the election of [New York City mayor-elect Zohran] Mamdani.”
Rapoza said that laid off and furloughed federal workers in Virginia’s share of the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, who reliably vote for Democrats, were given a reason to turn out to the polls to vote for Democratic Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger — who easily won her election by double digits, overperforming most pre-election polls.
“So, I think the shutdown in Virginia probably helped her [Spanberger] win more than maybe some people expected. But I don’t think the shutdown really helped New Jersey, and certainly not Mamdani,” the analyst said. “The people who blamed the Republicans for the shutdown were probably all Democrats anyway, and were they going to vote or not going to vote? Who knows? Apparently they were inspired to vote, maybe because of the shutdown.”
According to a CNN exit poll taken Nov. 4, more than six-in-10 voters from a household with a federal employee supported Spanberger.
Notably, Virginia’s two Democratic senators split on the Sunday deal to end the shutdown, with Sen. Tim Kaine supporting the deal and Sen. Mark Warner voting with the majority of his party to oppose it. Warner is up for reelection in 2026 while Kaine does not have to face voters again until 2030.
Veteran political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told the DCNF Wednesday — the day after the election — that the shutdown was a “drag on Republicans.”
When asked if most Nov. 4 voters blamed the shutdown on Trump and the GOP, Sheinkopf responded “absolutely.”
“This was definitely about the shutdown, and if you look at the economic numbers they’re not good. It just was a wipeout, which shouldn’t have been,” Sheinkopf said.
The consultant said Democratic momentum can continue into the 2026 midterms “unless the economic conditions are resolved.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Senate Dems)
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