Republican opinions of Trump are sinking but he is still very popular

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Donald Trumps 2024 presidential bid is off to a bad start.

The former president clearly hopes his announcement in the week after the midterm elections will help lock in other possible contenders for the Republican nomination in two years. His goal, it seems, is to flip a switch that will bring him back to something like a 2020 level of support, as the presumptive nominee.

It didn’t work out that way. The announcement was tempered by the parties’ poor performance in the election, triggered in part by candidates strongly endorsed by Trump. The launch event itself drew mostly shrugs, and Trump’s ongoing legal issues continue to trigger some Republican skepticism.

In recent days, polls have shown that Trump’s standing with his party is at or near a low since he first won in 2016. Against a theoretical field of opponents, Trump is leading, but in one-on-one contests, he often chases .

So the question is, in part, how many opponents Trump will face and how much more his party’s ratings might fall. And to inform our understanding of the unanswerable! questions, it is useful to consider the path Trump has taken to this point, both among Republicans and in general.

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We must recognize at the outset that 2024 will not play out exactly like 2016, if it does at all. However, much of Trump’s evolution in the party that year has been forgotten, including how quickly perceptions changed.

In May 2015, when Trump was first offered as a potential candidate, most Americans viewed him poorly. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 16 percent of voters viewed him favorably and only 23 percent of Republicans viewed him favorably. He then announced his candidacy immediately triggering a massive feud with his business partners after his disdain for immigrants. That fight drew a lot of attention to his candidacy and his positions, and by mid-July, his favorability among Republicans had risen to 57 percent. This pushed his overall favorable rating to 33 percent.

The chart below shows overall and Republican favorability for Trump in post-ABC polls prior to his presidency. It also shows the net favorable favorable views minus the unfavorable to give an idea of ​​how polarized opinions were at the time.

Interestingly, once the primaries were underway, Trump’s favorability ratings weren’t that great. He was in the mid-50s for most of early 2016, with polling from March 2016 showing Trump leading the overall race but trailing in head-to-head matchups against Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). As the candidates left, however, enough of their support went to Trump that, by early May, he had all but locked up the nomination by winning Indiana.

From that point, with Trump as the presumptive nominee, his favorable rating among Republicans exceeded 70 percent. It remained there through the election in the Post-ABC poll, with one exception: a poll taken right after the release of the Access Hollywood tape. Then, his favorability ratings dipped slightly before recovering, a pattern that will become familiar.

When Trump became president, two things happened. First, his favorability among Republicans has slowly climbed higher, in part because of his diligent efforts to appeal to his base of support. Second, his favorability has remained flat, even after the killing of a counterprotester at a right-wing rally in Charlottesville.

The graph below shows YouGov’s weekly data as well as the three-week average of polling numbers.

There are three points where Trumps position has softened considerably, though in ways that are important to consider. The first was after the midterms, when the Democrats won the House and embarrassed Trump and the GOP. Republicans, who had promised a steady win from the president, were less enthusiastic about him.

In the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, Trump’s favorability has taken a noticeable hit from Republicans and Americans in general. His favorability remained low until he lost the election, when (unusually) views of him improved slightly. Until Jan. 6, 2021.

However, the last YouGovs poll from Trumps presidency has him at 85 percent favor in his party, down slightly from the 90s, where he was. He stayed in the 80s for most of 2021; his average favorability among Republicans that year was 84 percent.

Finally, we come to 2022. For most of the year, his average favorability among Republicans is around 82 percent, just below the 2021 average. Then came the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home. From that point through the midterms, his party favorability averaged 80 percent. After midterms, though? Even lower, to an average of 76 percent.

About where he was before he came into office in 2017.

But consider what has changed since then. Since January 2017, Americans have seen Trump as president, seen his reaction to the pandemic, the racial justice protests in 2020 or the chaos in the Capitol. In June and July 2015, Republicans liked Trump in part because he defined himself in a way they valued. Now, he is well defined, and maintains strong favor.

That, by itself, is not enough to ensure that Hell will win or even hold his position at the top of a Republican field. But it’s a reminder that Republicans have seen through the past six years and largely still view Trump as a positive that can’t be said about the hell Republicans are up against. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has not cemented his position with Republicans as Trump has, nor has he faced the kind of political difficulties that Trump has.

We’re a long way from the 2024 primary, and a lot can change. The main questions remain the ones posed at the outset: who will run against him and whether his favorability will be further eroded.

The idea that Trump is irreversible, though, is clearly not the case.

Emily Guskin contributed to this report.

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