Trump’s Popularity Is On The Decline As His Legal Trouble Mounts

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Former President Trump has not suddenly become expansively popular since leaving office. Key measures of opinions of the ex-commander-in-chief among the general public show, in fact, that he’s still largely unpopular in any reasonable sense, despite his vocal supporters: as summarized by U.S. News & World Report, Trump’s “favorability ratings are well underwater, and key voter groups that propelled him to the White House have soured on him. Twice as many people say they’d be less likely to vote for a congressional candidate endorsed by him, compared to those who say they’d be more likely to vote for the down-ticket contenders. In a hypothetical rematch in 2024, he’d lose to his 2020 opponent.”

One Marquette survey from January found Joe Biden ahead of Trump by 10 percent, 53 percent to 43 percent, in a hypothetical match-up for the 2024 presidential election. It’s not just outside the GOP where Trump’s “star is falling,” as U.S. News & World Report put it: among Republicans, opposition to the former president is continuing as a comparatively smaller but persistent trend. Former Vice President Mike Pence, for example, bluntly characterized assertions from Trump that the ex-VP had the power to overturn the last presidential election outcome as threatening to the very foundation of democracy in the United States. Sure, it took Pence over a year since the Capitol riot to be quite so blunt, but this is Mike Pence, after all, so whatever you can get is something.

Also among Republicans, key figures like Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have continued to refute the ex-president’s claims that the last election was somehow rigged against him. Yes, it’s a low bar — but when a party features prominent members like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, those who reach the bar end up sticking out. As for more numerical examples of Trump’s floundering-at-best popularity, a recent Economist/YouGov survey found that just 40 percent of respondents had a favorable view of the former president, while 55 percent of respondents had an unfavorable one. In that survey, majorities of voters who were 45-64 years old and 65+ revealed unfavorable views of Trump — although exit surveys from the last election indicate Trump wins that year in both of these age groups. A separate Morning Consult survey found 60 percent of 65+ voters with an unfavorable view of the former president.

Another interesting turn of events, U.S. News & World Report shares, is that an NBC poll “found that 56% of GOPers describe themselves as supporters of the Republican Party, with 36% saying they are supporters of Trump,” which is a “reversal from late 2020, when 54% described themselves as supporters of Trump and 38% supporters of the GOP.” Allegiances among Republicans are shifting between the party and Trump. There’s a lot at stake here, of course — to be aligned with Trump essentially means at this point to be onboard with defenses of the Capitol riot and the threats to democracy that such entails. Read more at this link.