Nightmare Scenario for GOP Unfolding as Trump Surges in Primary Polls, Plummets in General Favorability

In the week following President Trump’s arraignment, polls are showing the worst-case scenario for Republicans in 2024 may be coming true: The former president is surging in the primary polls but his general favorability among all voters is dropping like a stone.Last Tuesday, Mr. Trump was arraigned on 34 felony charges relating to the alleged falsifying of business records in the payment of hush money to adult actress Stormy Daniels.In the following week, polling from Ipsos found that Mr. Trump’s popularity among Republicans has grown while his favorability among the general American population slips.Fears among Republicans that Mr. Trump would win the primary and sink the GOP’s chances to win in 2024 were perhaps most strongly formulated by a senior Republican fundraiser, Eric Levine, in an interview with Politico.“I don’t think it is fair to call Donald Trump a damaged candidate,” Mr. Levine said. “He is a metastasizing cancer who if he is not stopped is going to destroy the party.”Mr. Levine then added that, in his opinion, Mr. Trump is “probably the only Republican in the country, if not the only person in the country, who can’t beat Joe Biden.”It appears that the GOP’s voters didn’t get the memo.In an Ipsos and Reuters poll conducted between April 5 and 6, pollsters found that Mr. Trump was the clear favorite for the Republican nomination.In the survey, 58 percent of respondents chose Mr. Trump as their favorite Republican candidate, followed by Governor DeSantis with 21 percent, and Vice President Pence with 4 percent support.The poll’s findings are in line with most recent Republican primary polling, which also suggest that Mr. Trump enjoys a clear majority of support in the Republican Party.Simultaneously, an ABC Ipsos poll found that the former president’s overall approval ratings have dropped to a historic low, with only 25 percent of respondents reporting a favorable view of Mr. Trump, compared to 61 percent who have an unfavorable view.For comparison, Mr. Trump still enjoyed a 35 percent favorability rating and a 48 percent unfavorability rating in October 2020, the last time ABC and Ipsos polled the topic before the 2020 presidential election.The same poll found that President Biden enjoyed a 34 percent favorability rating at the beginning of April 2023, while 48 percent of respondents reported having an unfavorable opinion of the president.Another poll from last week, conducted by CNN and SSRS, found that some of this falloff in favorability for Mr. Trump came from a decline in perception among independents.The poll found that only 8 percent of independents felt that Mr. Trump did nothing wrong in the hush money payments case, while 37 percent said he acted illegally and 33 percent said he acted unethically.While there is still about a year and a half until the presidential election in 2024, the polling suggests that the Republicans could be headed for what some in the party have feared for years — another electoral defeat because of the continued popularity of Mr. Trump within the party, despite his broad unpopularity.

Nightmare Scenario for GOP Unfolding as Trump Surges in Primary Polls, Plummets in General Favorability

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