Fifty-six percent of all likely voters polled by Politico-GWU said they believe that not raising the debt ceiling “will be disastrous to the U.S. economy,” while 32 percent said it will not have a serious impact.
Among self-identifying Republicans, 49 percent said they believed consequences of default would be “disastrous” while 38 percent said the consequences would not be serious.
Voters who “strongly” identify with the tea-party movement were about evenly split on the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling, with 44 percent saying a default would not be serious and 43 percent saying it would be disastrous.
Meanwhile, 64 percent of Democrats said they believe a default would be disastrous while 27 percent said it would not be serious. Independents appear to be more closely aligned with Republicans than with Democrats in the debt-limit fight: 52 percent of independents polled by Politico-GWU said a default would be disastrous, compared with 34 who said it wouldn’t be serious.
