The Washington Post joins others in beginning to question just how true the polling numbers that show Donald Trump ‘s standing among Republicans around America…
This is my second post on this in the last few days…
There seems to be a hard look by pundits and polling people at the 70% to 90% Trump support numbers with the idea that that number isn’t what it appears to be…
The more Trump’s support is questioned?
Particularly in Foreign Affairs policy?
The more wiggle room Republicans law makers may think they have in going their way, NOT Trump’s…
Of course,, they never liked their party leader much before did they?
It also maybe a hidden warning that come November?
Some of the people counted in the high numbers as support for Trump?
May wonder away and vote for Democrats that can appeal to them on other issues stronger to THEM than Trump or even the Republican point of view….
The Midterm elections coming up in less than 3 months could have some surprises for Republicans and Trump who is hawking a doubtful ‘Red Wave’…..
Among strong Republicans, Trump’s overall approval rating is 93 percent, with 78 percent “strongly” approving of the president. The problem for Trump, however, is that these voters make up less than half of the Republican electorate — and 18 percent of likely voters.
Among the larger number of Republicans who identify less strongly with their party, Trump is much less popular. For example, Trump’s overall approval rating among not-so-strong Republicans is 72 percent, with 38 percent saying they strongly approve. Thirty-four percent say they only “somewhat” approve of Trump. Those numbers are similar among independent-leaning Republicans.
To be sure, having reservations about the president doesn’t mean Republican voters will abandon their party and vote for Democrats in the autumn. But it does raise the question of how much Republican congressional candidates can count on those who “somewhat approve” of Trump.
To go beyond the standard approval question and examine support for Trump in a different way, we also asked respondents how they felt about Trump in comparison with other prominent Republicans: Vice President Pence, former president George W. Bush, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and the late, former president Ronald Reagan.
We show these assessments as favorability rankings in the figure below. Among strong Republicans, shown on the left side, Trump is the clear winner. He’s even held in higher esteem than Reagan, a party hero. Strong Republicans also dislike McCain, a senator who has repeatedly clashed with Trump.
But the patterns are very different for not-so-strong Republicans (center) and Republican-leaning independents (right). In both groups, Trump’s popularity is not much different than that of Pence or Bush (who has also criticized Trump). These Republicans do not seem to favor Trump substantially more than his Republican predecessor or his own vice president. Notably, Reagan is the clear favorite, with not-so-strong Republicans more likely to favor Reagan over Trump about 80 percent of the time. This is consistent with the finding that “the party of Reagan” still identifies the 40th president as the best in their lifetime. We suspect these results would surprise those discussing Trump’s “almost-unheard-of-level of support from members of his own party.”……
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All of this suggests that portraying Trump’s support among Republican voters as unflinching is missing a major piece of the picture. The ongoing controversies about Trump appear to affect a large portion of Republican voters. If Republican politicians fail to sufficiently distance themselves from even Trump’s most controversial actions, the GOP might see reduced turnout on Election Day.
The other concern for Republican congressional candidates is that non-Republicans don’t like Trump. “Pure independents” — voters who say they don’t lean toward the Republicans or Democrats — are twice as likely to rate Trump with strong disapproval as they are with strong approval.