Former President Donald Trump’s support among Republicans has surprisingly softened since his indictment in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, a new national poll revealed Tuesday.
Even though he still holds a commanding lead over a crowded field, Trump’s support dipped from 53% to 47% among GOP voters in the past month, according to the CNN poll of 1,350 registered voters.
A significant 25% of Republicans say prosecutors were right to charge him in the documents case and a similar number say he should end his campaign after being indicted.
Only 67% of GOP voters hold a favorable view of him, down a full 10% from a similar poll in May. The poll, which was conducted late last week, included 560 Republicans and has a 3.4% margin of error.
GOP voters are almost evenly split over whether Trump is the candidate with the best chance of retaking the White House, with 51% saying he is the strongest one and 49% saying he’s not.
The lackluster numbers are somewhat surprising because conventional wisdom held that the indictment would only help Trump consolidate his backing in the GOP primary race.
His support has generally been rising among Republicans in recent months and his poll numbers rose noticeably after his previous indictment on New York state charges tied to a hush money payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels.
The polls could be an outlier or a temporary blip as Trump holds an overwhelming lead over DeSantis, whose support has stuck at 26% even as Trump’s dipped.
Former Vice President Mike Pence earned a relatively strong 9% in the new poll followed by ex-UN ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott and Trump critic Chris Christie. Others drew less than 1% in the crowded field.
The poll was completed before Trump gave a widely panned interview on Fox News Monday in which he admitted defying a subpoena to return classified documents and claimed he had the right to keep them until he had the chance to rummage through boxes for golf gear and other personal items.
Christie mocked mocked Trump for what he described as a ridiculous excuse for not complying with a federal subpoena.
“Does anybody in America believe this?” Christie asked on CBS News. “Maybe he could have skipped a couple of rounds of golf and gone through the boxes to respond to a subpoena from a grand jury.”
Some of Trump’s rivals may have picked up the stronger-than-expected negative reaction to the indictment in early internal polls of Republicans. Pence and Haley both flip-flopped to gently criticize Trump after initially suggesting the indictment was unfounded.
Even with the modest shifts in Republican attitudes, GOP voters remain dramatically out of step with Americans as a whole.
More than 60% of all voters in the poll approve of the charges against Trump and say he should drop out of the race. That includes more than 90% of Democrats as well as two-thirds of independents.
Those numbers suggest Trump will face a very unfriendly electoral climate in a general election if he is able to navigate his legal woes and win the Republican nomination.
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