Despite the fact that most Republican political figures continue to kowtow to failed, one-term, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump, it turns out that many GOP voters don’t think the disgraced former chief executive would help them retake the White House.
A new poll from CNN has bad news for Trump as he flirts with running again in 2024:
“Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say, 63% to 37%, that Trump should be the leader of the Republican Party. But they are about evenly split over whether having the defeated former President back on the ticket in 2024 would be an advantage: 51% say that Republicans have a better chance of retaking the presidency if Trump is the nominee, with 49% saying the party would be better off with a different nominee. That’s a very different landscape from 2019 when more than three-quarters of Republicans said their party had a better shot in 2020 with Trump as their nominee than they would with a different candidate.”
The numbers are even worse for Trump among college educated voters and independents. Independent voters broke for Trump in 2016 but abandoned him four years later, casting their ballots for President Joe Biden:
“Trump’s support isn’t equally distributed throughout the party: 69% of Republicans without a college degree think Trump should head the party, compared with 49% of those who hold a college degree. A 72% majority of conservatives say Trump should head the party, compared to 49% among the smaller bloc of moderates in the party. And 71% of self-identified Republicans want Trump to lead the party, compared with 51% of Republican-leaning independents who say the same.”
Those numbers don’t bode well for Trump or the GOP, according to a panel of experts who appeared on “Inside Politics” Sunday, with CNN analyst Jeff Zeleny noting:
“That is fascinating there and not a good trajectory and what has happened during this period? Former president Trump has been sticking his head up more and been more active– not like he’s sitting on the sidelines. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. As I travel around the country and talk with Republicans and voters and other rank and file folks, there is, even among Trump supporters, not a lot of unanimity about they want him to come back.”
That led CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins to add:
“You wonder if it only goes down further what does it change going forward. Part of it said that 58% of the Republicans without a college degree thought their chances would be better with Trump. But when you ask college grads, only 34% thought they would be better with Trump as the leader.”
Zeleny agreed, concluding:
“We’re seeing a delicate dance here and everyone waiting for him to disappear. The former president says he keeps teasing he’s going to have an announcement shortly — I don’t think it’s coming shortly at all. He’s going to draw that out in the next season perhaps. But this is not necessarily great news for Donald Trump, especially that declining number — that’s a fascinating number.”
Sounds like many in the Republican Party know that Trump is a loser. And with legal problems piling up against him, even if he does decide to run again, he could be doing so while under indictment, which isn’t exactly going to draw independent voters to him.
Here’s the video from CNN:
