Global Courant 2023-04-18 23:37:53
Former President Donald Trump at the NRA-ILA Leadership Forum April 14 in Indianapolis. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump received quite a stir among Republican primary voters after his impeachment in New York in late March — but now that wave of support seems to be fading fast, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll.
The survey of 1,530 American adults, conducted April 14-17, suggests Trump remains vulnerable — and far from inevitable — in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Just two weeks ago, Trump beat Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, his biggest potential challenger, by 26 percentage points in a one-on-one contest between voters who described themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents (57% to 31%). It was the former president’s biggest lead to date.
Since then, however, Trump’s advantage over DeSantis has shrunk by 10 points (52% to 36%).
And while Trump retains majority support — narrowly — in a head-to-head confrontation with DeSantis, he has slipped below 50% when going up against the entire Republican field, up 3 points (up 49%) since the beginning of April .
For the first time since February, fewer than half of Republican voters now say they would prefer Trump (49%, down 5 points) to “someone else” as the party’s nominee. Instead, most say they would prefer someone else (39%) or are unsure (12%).
It’s possible that Trump’s initial post-indictment bump was inflated by fans so eager to express their outrage that they (temporarily) responded better to polls. The new Yahoo News/YouGov survey may mark a return to more normal response patterns.
It’s also worth noting that Trump is still outperforming today compared to earlier this year. For example, Trump’s lead over DeSantis is twice as large as it was in late February and mid-March. And it wasn’t until early February that it was DeSantis narrowly ahead of Trump, 45% to 41%.
Yet the new Yahoo News/YouGov poll indicates that Trump will not be able to lead the right-wing indictment all the way to the nomination — much less the White House.
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Example: The number of Americans who approve of Trump being “indicted for falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to a porn star” has risen 5 percentage points in the past two weeks (to 47%, up from 42%) while disapproval has dropped (from 39% to 37%). The number who think Trump has done what he has been accused of has also risen (to 48%, up from 45%), and about the same share (47%) say Trump’s actions constitute a crime (versus just 31% who says they do). not). Among registered voters, a majority (51%) now believe Trump committed a crime in this matter; only 34% say they have not committed a crime.
Gov. Ron DeSantis at a press conference in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
In other words, public opinion is turning against the former president — and that includes even Republicans. Today, 19% of them approve of Trump’s impeachment; two weeks ago it was still 12%.
Meanwhile, President Biden’s numbers are moving in the opposite direction. While Biden’s approval rating remains below 50% among all Americans, it is now at its highest level (44%) since September 2021 (compared to about 40% for much of 2022). His approval rating for the economy (40%) is now 4 points higher than at the beginning of February, while his approval rating for inflation (36%) is up 5 points over the same period. And he’s doing 3 or 4 points better on each of those measures among registered voters.
Despite the improvement, Biden’s approval ratings are still lower than the White House would like them to go into 2024. Still, the current trendlines appear to be in the president’s favor. In a general election contest, Biden now enjoys a 4-point lead over both Trump (46% to 42%) and DeSantis (45% to 41%) among registered voters. A month agoBiden led Trump by just 2 points, and he was tied with DeSantis.
Going forward, the question that will overshadow Trump’s comeback bid will be whether Republicans see his legal woes as a reason to rally behind him — or as a reason to gravitate toward a lower-bag alternative. In addition to the hush money payments, Trump is also under criminal investigation for a number of other alleged crimes, including attempting to reverse the results of the 2020 election and inciting the January 6, 2021, bombing of the Capitol, as well as disparaging classified documents with him to his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left office. Further charges are possible.
Trump supporters wait for the former president’s motorcade to return to his Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida, after his April 4 arraignment in New York. (Paul Hennessy/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Most registered voters (51%) already believe Trump should not serve a second term if he is “convicted of a felony” in the hush money case; only 37% think he should run for president if found guilty. At the same time, a whopping 54% of voters now believe Trump “committed a serious crime” in his lifetime, an increase of 7 points since early April. It remains to be seen how the hush money trial — and any additional charges — will affect such perceptions.
For now, most Republican voters (52%) still think Trump has “the best chance of winning the 2024 general election,” versus 34% for DeSantis. But just two weeks ago, those numbers were 55% and 29% respectively. Florida’s governor has yet to launch his widely anticipated candidacy; reports suggest he will announce later this spring. To secure the nomination, DeSantis must convince the GOP primary voters that he has a better chance against Biden than Trump — with as much help from the courts as he can get.
