Voters Credit President Biden and Congressional Democrats More for Bipartisan Debt Limit Bill Passage
By Grace Adcox, Carly Berke, Lew Blank, Danielle Deiseroth, Sabrina Jacobs, and Rob Todaro
On Saturday, President Biden signed the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 into law, suspending the debt limit just two days before the U.S. was expected to default on its debt. The bill was the culmination of weeks of tense negotiations that primarily took place between the White House and Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
In response, new Data for Progress polling finds that voters credit Biden and Democrats in Congress for avoiding the default by an +11-point margin over McCarthy and Republicans in Congress. This includes Democratic voters by a +60-point margin and Independent voters by a +11-point margin. Nearly half of voters credit either President Biden (28 percent) or Democrats in Congress (21 percent) for delivering a successful, bipartisan agreement to raise the federal debt limit, while a smaller portion of voters credit Speaker McCarthy (21 percent) or Republicans in Congress (17 percent).
However, despite months of intense public debate in Washington, voters across the country are still relatively uninformed about the debt limit. Our polling finds a majority (65 percent) of voters only know “a little” about the federal debt limit, while 17 percent say they know “nothing at all.” Only 19 percent report knowing “a lot” about the debt limit.
We also asked voters how much they have heard about the debt limit agreement that the president signed Saturday. We find that a majority of voters have heard either a lot (31 percent) or a little (53 percent) about the bill, while just 17 percent have heard nothing at all. This indicates that although voters may not have followed the ins and outs of the legislative process surrounding the agreement, news of the deal made its way to most of them.
While voters may not be familiar with the intricacies of the debt limit negotiations that have transpired over the past several months, these findings indicate that President Biden’s and congressional Democrats’ role in preventing the debt default has broken through.
Survey Methodology
From June 2 to 3, 2023, Data for Progress conducted a survey of 1,249 likely voters nationally using web panel respondents. The sample was weighted to be representative of likely voters by age, gender, education, race, geography, and voting history. The survey was conducted in English. The margin of error is ±3 percentage points.