Things just took a particularly ugly turn for Donald Trump
Donald Trump likes to regularly brag about his approval among Republicans. He claims it’s somewhere between 95% and 90%. Even though Trump does enjoy a high approval rating among Republicans, nearly 10% of them want him impeached and removed from office, according to FiveThirtyEight polls, meaning his rating is far worse than the polls he’s been tweeting.
The obvious problem with this statistic in the first place, aside from implying that his own political party is the only voter bloc that matters, is the fact that the Republican Party is rapidly shrinking by just about every observable metric – something likely to get worse as Trump’s impeachment trial looms nearer, and more conservative media outlets and prominent Republican figures (not necessarily those who currently hold elected office) continue to speak out against him.
A recent Civiqs poll showed some troubling numbers that Trump should take pretty seriously, and which he has most likely never seen, given his reputation for firing internal pollsters who bring him bad news. Rather than simply marking disapproval, the poll broke things down into six different categories: Those who support Trump no matter what; those who support but are open to changing their mind; those who neither support nor oppose; and then there are those who oppose Trump no matter what, those who might change their mind and support him, and those who are unsure either way. Nearly half of the respondents said they’d refuse to support Trump, while just 30% of Trump supporters said they would stand by him no matter what – and only 8% were on the fence about supporting him or not. That doesn’t show much of a mobilized base. Even if he were to win the support of the 8% of neutral voters, it would still be far from what he needs to win re-election.
With favorability numbers like this, it’s easy to see why Republicans are canceling state primaries to ward off serious primary challengers, especially ones who are feeding off his impeachment. While Trump and his Republican defenders might be tempted to blame the polling results on “fake news,” over 60% of the respondents polled said they don’t watch MSNBC, while half of them don’t watch Fox.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making