No politician in modern history has held as much sway over his base as President Donald Trump. And perhaps nothing has mattered more to his political career than that.
Whenever Trump’s been down – such as after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot or after he was indicted four times – he’s been able to count on his base to keep him relevant and in the game. Republicans’ fear of crossing Trump is perhaps the animating principle in the party, and it’s allowed him to plow through any number of controversies that would have sunk pretty much any other politician.
But more than ever, that’s starting to change. We’ve seen cracks in Trump’s base for a while. And they’re starting to widen.
It’s not just Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia who seems to be balking at at least some of what she’s seeing.
In fact, a number of recent polls have shown 1 in 5 Republicans or more disapproving of Trump on a range of issues. Sometimes, those numbers stretch much higher, and even around majority territory.
It hasn’t pulled down his overall approval rating among Republicans much, but it suggests that the base isn’t so unflinchingly in his corner anymore.
Here are the key issues.
It’s difficult to find an issue on which Republicans have been less pleased with Trump. Few polls have shown even half of them approving. But generally speaking, they’ve chosen the neutral option.
A recent Reuters-Ipsos poll, for example, showed 31% of Republicans disapproved of Trump on the issue, compared to 44% who approved and 25% who chose neither option.
But when you get more people to choose, things look considerably worse. A recent Marquette University Law School poll actually showed a majority of Republicans – 54% – disapproved of Trump’s handling of “information about Jeffrey Epstein.”
This is probably Trump’s most significant problem, because of how much people care about it.
His disapproval rating among Republicans in recent polls has generally been pegged around 1 in 4. It was at 24% in a Yahoo News-YouGov poll, 25% in a CBS News-YouGov poll and 26% in the Reuters-Ipsos poll.
But that number spiked to 39% in the Marquette poll.
And there’s reason to believe these numbers might actually undersell Trump’s problem with the base here. After all, recent CBS polling showed a majority of Republicans – 57% – say the administration hasn’t focused enough on lowering the cost of goods and services. That’s certainly a form of disapproval.
Also tellingly: Trump’s disapproval rating among Republicans on the broader issue of the economy has also climbed. It was as high as 22% in a Fox News poll and 32% in an AP-NORC poll.
This hasn’t gotten much attention. But it’s amazing that Democrats haven’t made more an issue of it.
GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky recently wagered that Trump spending tens of billions of dollars to bail out Argentina’s government could be a “deal-breaker” with the MAGA base. After all, it’s about the polar opposite of “America First.”
And he seems to have a point.
The Marquette poll found that a whopping 69% of Republicans disapproved of Trump “providing $20-$40 billion to help stabilize Argentina’s economy.”
It’s one poll, and it’d be good to get more data. But the idea that 7 in 10 Republicans could disapprove of Trump on anything in any poll would once have been unthinkable.
Trump’s problems here are many.
For one, he promised to end the war on Day One and has decidedly failed to live up to that. For another, he’s generally catered to Russia in a way that makes hawkish Republicans uncomfortable – including with his recent ceasefire plan that looked as if it were written by Moscow.
His disapproval rating among Republicans on this issue has ranged from 23% in a recent Gallup poll all the way up to 40% in the Marquette poll.
Trump’s focus on foreign matters in general seems to be a problem with some Republicans who prefer he’d turn his focus to his own country. For instance, the same Gallup poll showed 22% disapproved of Trump’s handling of the situation in the Middle East – this despite the recent ceasefire deal in Gaza.
This one might be surprising to some people. But it’s looking like Democrats’ efforts to focus the government shutdown debate on Obamacare subsidies has paid off.
Trump is seeing some of his worst numbers to date on health care – about as bad as when the GOP tried to pass a very unpopular Obamacare repeal bill in 2017.
His disapproval rating among Republicans on health care has registered at 19% (Reuters), 21% (Gallup), 26% (Fox News), and all the way up to 32% in the AP-NORC poll.
This has been a sleeping giant of an issue for Trump. Pew Research Center polling showed the percentage of Republicans who said Trump was making the federal government work better dropped from 76% in February to 55% in August.
And the government shutdown doesn’t appear to have helped.
The AP-NORC poll conducted in early November showed 32% of Republicans disapproved of how Trump was handling the federal government. The Marquette poll showed nearly half – 48% – disapproved of Trump’s handling of the shutdown.
All of these are cracks in the base. Whether they ultimately cause Republicans to flee is another question. But it’s clear we’re seeing cracks in a way we rarely have before.
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