Gallup: Majority of Americans can't judge sequester's impact

A majority of Americans said that they don't know enough about the impact of the sequestration to judge whether the $85 billion in across-the-board cuts have been good or bad for the country, according to a poll released Thursday by Gallup.

Of those surveyed, 55 percent said they don't know enough to weigh the sequester's impact, while 27 percent judge the cuts as a bad thing and 17 percent view them as a positive step. 

The number saying they are unsure about the sequester's effect is actually up from a week earlier, when 51 percent said they didn't know enough to say.

The issue becomes even more muddled when Americans are asked how the sequester would impact them personally. Six in 10 respondents said they don't know enough to say, while just under a quarter report they expect the sequester to negatively impact them, and 14 percent predict it will ultimately be a good thing for them personally.

"The American public has not yet come to a strongly shared judgment on the effects of the sequestration cuts, which became law March 1," Gallup's Frank Newport said in a statement. "More than half of Americans say they simply don't know enough to tell whether the cuts are a good thing or a bad thing for the country or for themselves — as was the case when Gallup first asked about the impact of the sequester, right after it went into effect."

The results are likely troubling for the Obama administration, which spent the weeks preceding the automatic cuts warning of potentially dire consequences were the cuts allowed to go into effect. At the same time, most of the furloughs, budget cuts, and contract cancellations expected as a result of the sequester are not expected to manifest for another month.

"You know, remember the macro effect here according to outside economists is up to three-quarters of a million jobs lost," White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday. "And that's a shame because the economy is poised, as we've seen again and again from data in various sectors of the economy, the economy's poised to do well this year."

The Gallup survey found that Republicans were more likely to have an opinion than Democrats about sequestration and more likely to see the cuts as a good thing. While 57 percent of Democrats say they didn't know enough to say whether the cuts were a good idea, only 39 percent of Republicans didn't have an opinion. While a third of Republicans saw the sequester as a good thing, only 1 in 10 Democrats did.

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