Trump’s Domination of GOP Field Surges Following Georgia Indictments: Poll

A new poll of Republican voters by CBS released Sunday suggests that President Trump’s dominance of the GOP primary is widening even further despite the recent charges against him in Georgia.The poll of 2,016 American adults, including 538 likely Republican primary voters, taken last week found that Mr. Trump now leads his nearest challenger, Governor DeSantis, by a whopping 46 points, 62 percent to 16 percent. All the other contenders for the GOP nomination are in single digits.Remarkably given his propensity to fabricate facts to suit the moment, 71 percent of Trump voters told the pollsters that they believe he tells them the unvarnished truth. The voters said they trust Mr. Trump more than friends and family, conservative press figures, and religious leaders to be honest and forthcoming. Just 42 percent of those surveyed said they trust religious leaders to tell them the truth.Respondents to the poll dismissed the charges accusing Mr. Trump of interfering in the 2020 election in Georgia, many because they said they continue to believe the election was illegitimate and that President Biden is not the duly elected president of the United States. Some 71 percent said the Georgia charges are politically motivated. Three-fourths of those polled said they are supporting him in part as a means of expressing their displeasure over the myriad legal challenges facing the candidate.The GOP voters also expressed frustration with the campaign in general, with about half telling the pollsters that it has been too focused on the former president to the exclusion of economic and social issues facing the country.The vast majority of those polled — nine out of ten — said the other Republican candidates should spend more time making a case for themselves rather than attacking Mr. Trump when they take the debate stage later this week in Milwaukee for the first exchange of the 2024 presidential cycle. Mr. Trump announced Saturday that he would not be attending the debate and would instead sit for an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson in an attempt at counter-programming.A former governor of Arkansas now running as an anti-Trump alternative announced Sunday morning that he had met the criteria for participating in the debate and would be attending along with Mr. DeSantis, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, Vice President Pence, Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Senator Scott, and the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum. Mr. Hutchinson polled at about 1 percent in the CBS poll released Sunday.In contrast to the GOP voters polled by CBS, some lawmakers who have followed the legal cases against Mr. Trump believe they are serious enough to disqualify him from sitting in the Oval Office for another four-year term. In one of his strongest rebukes to Mr. Trump to date, Senator Cassidy said during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday that the charges of mishandling classified documents are a “slam dunk” against the candidate and that he will likely lose to Mr. Biden in next year’s general election if he is the nominee.“I think any Republican on that stage in Milwaukee will do a better job than Joe Biden,” the Louisiana Republican senator said. “And so I want one of them to win. If former President Trump ends up getting the nomination, but cannot win a general, that means we will have four more years of policies which have led to very high inflation … and to many other things which I think have been deleterious to our country’s future.”

Trump’s Domination of GOP Field Surges Following Georgia Indictments: Poll

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