Massachusetts Democrats want delegation to fight Trump. The rest of the state? Not so much.

THIS WEEK, Sen. Cory Booker held the Senate floor for a record-breaking 25 hours to protest actions taken during the first two months of the Trump administration. The New Jersey Democrat said the harm being caused demanded action that would call out the administration and show a willingness to fight back.

Polls of Democratic voters show that Booker’s resolve fits the mood of Democrats nationally, and especially here in Massachusetts, who have grown frustrated with a perceived lack of fight from their representatives in Congress.  

A new MassINC Polling Group poll of Massachusetts voters finds that 62 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want Democrats in Washington to “mainly work to stop the Republican agenda.” Only 27 percent want Democrats to mainly work with Republicans.

The poll was carried out from March 17-20, immediately after 10 Senate Democrats, led by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, joined Republicans in allowing a vote on a funding bill that avoided a government shutdown. 

The 35-point gap in favor of resistance to Republicans is much larger than when CNN asked the same question of Democrats nationally earlier in March. CNN found 57 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favored opposition, versus 42 percent who wanted cooperation.

Even with the tighter margin, those numbers are a reversal from when CNN asked this question during the first Trump administration. In September 2017, 74 percent of Democrats wanted cooperation, and only 23 percent wanted resistance.

Democrats are clearly in a fighting mood. The same CNN poll found that only 63 percent of Democrats held a favorable view of the national party, likely driven by the feeling that not enough was being done to oppose the new administration. A separate Economist/YouGov poll from March found that 71 percent of Democratic voters felt Democrats were “not doing enough” to “resist actions by Donald Trump that they disagree with,” up from 60 percent in February. 

Given that Massachusetts is one of the deepest blue states, it makes sense that it would be firmly in the vanguard of the resistance to Trump. The challenge for the state’s all-Democratic congressional delegation is that the overall Massachusetts electorate is not exactly mounting the barricades.

Among all voters – Democrats, Republicans, and independents – 48 percent want Democrats in Congress to work with Republicans, while 40 percent want opposition. (MassINC Polling Group asked this question of all voters; CNN only asked it of Democrats, so there isn’t a national comparison here.) 

Unsurprisingly, 87 percent of Massachusetts Republicans and Republican leaners want Democrats to work with Republicans. But so do 50 percent of the remaining independents who do not lean towards either party. These independents are also less likely to follow the news closely.

While 45 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans say they are following the news about the Trump administration “very closely,” only 27 percent of independents say the same. Independents are not wholly tuned out of political news, but they are more likely to pay less attention. 

How voters feel about that news also shows a strong partisan split. The poll asked voters to pick three emotions from a list to describe their feelings about national politics right now.

The clear top three for Democrats are “angry” (52 percent), “fearful” (48 percent), and “ashamed” (47 percent), followed by “frustrated” (37 percent) and “anxious” (32 percent). 

Republicans, by contrast, are feeling “optimistic” (45 percent), “patriotic” (25 percent), and “motivated” (23 percent). Following these, there is a long tail of ambivalent and negative emotions. “Satisfied,” “inspired,” “proud,” and “satisfied” (all 19 percent) run into “conflicted,” “frustrated,” and “anxious” (16-17 percent). One in 10 Republicans report feeling overwhelmed or exhausted. Even the least popular option, “ashamed,” garners 5 percent of Republicans. This pattern suggests that Massachusetts Republicans are more divided in their opinions than are Democrats. 

Independents again split the difference. They feel more negatively than positively, as Democrats do, but express a broader range of responses, more like Republicans. In place of a clear top one to three responses, they have six to eight: “Anxious” and “ashamed” top the list with 32 percent, followed by “frustrated” (31 percent). But independents are also feeling “exhausted” (29 percent), “conflicted” (28 percent) and “overwhelmed” (21 percent) at higher rates than Democrats and Republicans.  

Feeling exhausted and overwhelmed may explain why more of these independent voters have tuned out from the news, which may weigh on how they want Democrats to react.

Overall, about half (51 percent) of Massachusetts voters who are paying “very close” attention to the Trump administration want opposition from Democrats. Among those paying less attention, 53 percent want Democrats to work with Republicans. That pattern holds even among Democrats: 76 percent of Democrats who are following the news very closely want opposition. Among Democrats paying less attention, that drops to about half.  

Democratic lawmakers are clearly hearing from their party faithful that they need to do more to resist the Trump agenda. The challenge for them will be balancing that impulse against the desire for bipartisanship from the rest of the electorate — and against the limits of their resistance as the minority party.  

John Gee is research manager and Richard Parr is senior research director at the MassINC Polling Group.