Polls Suggest the Sheen Is Wearing Off for Team Trump
The most galling poll of all to the former president, perhaps, came out of Utah over the weekend. It showed Trump losing to both Governor DeSantis and Liz Cheney in a 2024 primary there.
If a number of recent polls are to be believed, the MAGA revolution — or at least its primary incarnation, Donald Trump — may be losing its luster among American voters, especially the Republicans he needs to make it through a bruising primary.
A number of recent polls suggest that Mr. Trump’s grip on the GOP is slipping, particularly ones that have surveyed voters’ preferences since the midterm elections. His announcement that he would run for president a third time in 2024 less than a week after the election has not moved the needle in his favor so far.
The most galling poll of all to the former president, perhaps, came out of Utah over the weekend. Registered voters there hinted that not only would Mr. Trump lose to Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, in a head-to-head matchup, he would also lose to his arch-nemesis, Liz Cheney, the soon-to-be former Wyoming congresswoman who dogged Mr. Trump during her tenure on the January 6 committee.
The Deseret News-Hinkley Institute of Politics poll showed Mr. DeSantis leading a hypothetical 2024 race with 24.2 percent and Ms. Cheney, who campaigned against several of Mr. Trump’s hand-chosen candidates during the midterms and has said she will do everything she can to keep him out of the White House in 2024, with 16.4 percent. Mr. Trump came in third with 14.6 percent of the tally.
While many Republicans still profess to have a favorable view of Mr. Trump, several recent polls suggest his star is fading — especially when his candidacy is put up against that of the Florida governor. One commissioned by the Club for Growth, a one-time ally of the former president that has since broken ranks, suggests Mr. Trump’s advantage over Mr. DeSantis in several key states has been reversed since August.
The poll by WPA Intelligence shows Mr. DeSantis ahead of Mr. Trump by double-digits in the early battleground state of Iowa, as well as in early primary states such as New Hampshire, Florida, and Georgia. In August, Mr. Trump led Mr. DeSantis by 15 points among Iowa Republicans. By mid-November — after the midterms — Mr. DeSantis was ahead by 11 points.
“Republicans need to be united behind a strong candidate and a platform that shows voters real solutions to beat Biden and the Democrats in 2024,” the Club for Growth president, David McIntosh, said in a statement. “Our polling shows that Republican primary voters recognize Trump’s insults against Republicans as hollow and counterproductive, and it’s taking a significant toll on his support.”
Despite his continued favorability among Republicans overall, Mr. Trump’s aura is fading among GOP members who count themselves as moderates as well as among independent voters.
A separate poll released last week by WPA showed that Mr. Trump is viewed unfavorably by almost one in three voters who backed Republicans in the midterms, including 33 percent of “Reagan Republicans,” 34 percent of “Traditional Republicans,” 34 percent of Fox News viewers, and even one in five voters who backed him in 2020.
Additionally, 66 percent of independents view Mr. Trump unfavorably, including 52 percent who view him “very unfavorably.”
More than 40 percent of the Republicans polled by WPA said Mr. Trump should not be leading the Republican Party, while 37 percent said he should. Among Fox News viewers, 45 percent say Mr. Trump should no longer be the leader and face of the GOP; 35 percent say he should be.
The partisan WPA poll is something of an outlier, however. According to averages compiled by FiveThirtyEight, in the more than 20 polls taken since the midterm elections, 11 show Mr. Trump besting Mr. DeSantis and nine show the opposite. Two of the polls show the pair in a dead heat. The numbers are a far cry from pre-election polls that Mr. Trump dominated wholesale, however.
A poll not on that rundown, by Marist College, asked Republican-leaning voters whether Mr. Trump or “someone else” has a better shot of winning in 2024. In October 2021, Mr. Trump led 50 percent to 35. In mid-November, “someone else” led 54 percent to 35.