In spite of more public awareness about federal workforce cuts’ impacts, opposition to them hasn’t grown, survey suggests

More Americans report seeing the impacts of President Donald Trump’s cuts to federal programs and the government workforce, according to new survey data released Monday by the Partnership for Public Service. Despite the additional respondents noticing the effects of these reductions, however, the share of individuals supporting or opposing the administration’s overhauls has hardly changed over the past six months. 

The nonpartisan good government nonprofit found in a fall survey that 46% of respondents said they know someone who has been affected by the federal cuts while 48% did not. In comparison, when the Partnership polled this question in March, only 29% reported they knew an impacted individual and 64% said they didn’t know of anybody. 

“The fact that about half the country says they are noticing the impact suggests the issue is not just an inside-the-Beltway story,” the researchers wrote. “Rather, people around the country see how such changes are affecting their communities and lives. Because the reductions and changes to federal personnel and funding are ongoing, the full effects of these actions may not be known for a long time.”

The survey of 1,000 U.S. adults was conducted between Sept. 12 and 15. While it did not rely on a random, nationally representative sample, the Partnership said that it used “quota sampling techniques to resemble the demographic makeup of the U.S.” 

Additionally, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to know someone impacted by the federal cuts, but the share of Democrats and Republicans who know such an individual has increased similarly since the spring. 

In March, 38% of Democratic respondents either were or knew an affected individual. That percentage has increased to 55%. For Republican participants, during the same period, the share has risen from 21% to 37%. 

Despite more people reporting that they are noticing the consequences of Trump’s federal cuts, the percentages of Americans supporting or opposing the reductions remain largely unchanged. 

For the September poll, 43% backed Trump’s changes to government while 51% objected. In March, those statistics were 42% and 54%, respectively. 

“Continued funding cuts, personnel reductions and harms to the public documented by the Partnership and others do not seem to be shifting opinion thus far,” the researchers wrote. “However, the significant increase in the number of people who say they are noticing their effects suggests that the cuts are having some impact and the public is paying attention.”

When the Partnership asked about cuts to specific agencies, however, more respondents expressed worries. About two-thirds of participants said they were concerned about reductions at the Defense Department, Federal Emergency Management Agency and science agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. 

Similarly, the American Customer Satisfaction Index on Tuesday reported that citizen satisfaction with federal government services scored 70.4 out of 100, a 19-year high, in spite of the recent widespread layoffs of civil servants.

ACSI attributed score improvements at the State Department, as an example, to the roll out of a digital passport renewal process. Many individuals working on that project, however, have left or been forced out of the federal government under Trump. 

Likewise, a recent Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center poll found that 33% of respondents approve of how Trump is managing the government, which is down from 43% in March. The decrease was largely driven by Republicans; the survey was conducted Nov. 6-10, which was before the record-breaking 43-day shutdown ended. 

The Partnership poll also found that young people are more likely to notice the impact of federal cuts. For 18 to 24-year-old respondents, 60% either are or know someone affected by the reductions, and 59% of 25 to 34-year-old participants said the same. In comparison, only 33% of those 65 and older said they are or know an impacted individual. 

Researchers posited that this could be due to Trump’s cuts to the Education Department and the federal hiring freeze reducing job opportunities.