This month, a Gallup poll found that Americans are almost twice as likely to say they want their Congressional representative to vote against rather than for an increase in the debt ceiling (42 percent to 22 percent, with 35 percent saying they had no opinion).

CATHERINE RAMPELL

Dollars to doughnuts.

Gallup also asked those Americans who had expressed opinions to explain why they had answered that question as they had.  Today the polling organization has released all 700 of these open-ended responses, which can provide some useful insights into how ordinary Americans think about this issue.

I just whipped up a couple of word clouds (via wordle.net) to give a sense of the themes behind both sets of responses. Here are the responses from people who think their representative in Congress should vote against raise the debt ceiling:

Source: Gallup. Image created using Wordle.

Here are the responses from people who think their representative in Congress should vote for raising the debt ceiling:

Source: Gallup. Image created using Wordle.

For what it’s worth, I see that the word “economy” was used more frequently by those who wanted to raise the debt ceiling. Notice any other interesting patterns here?

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