Exclusive poll: GOP voters want the party to stand by Trump
Exclusive poll: GOP voters want the party to stand by Trump
A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted after the Republican nominee’s lewd comments went public shows a sharp partisan divide.
By Steven Shepard, Jake Sherman and Anna Palmer
10/09/16 07:00 AM EDT
Updated 10/09/16 07:42 AM EDT
A wave of Republican officials abandoned Donald Trump on Saturday, but, at least for now, rank-and-file Republicans are standing by the party's presidential candidate, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted immediately after audio was unearthed Friday that had the GOP nominee crudely bragging about groping women and trying to lure a married woman into an affair.
Overall, fewer than four-in-10 voters -- 39 percent -- think Trump should end his presidential campaign, while only slightly more voters, 45 percent, think he should not drop out.
But voters are largely viewing Trump's comments through their own partisan lens: 70 percent of Democrats say Trump should end his campaign, but just 12 percent of Republicans -- and 13 percent of female Republicans -- agree.
As of now, GOP voters largely want the party to stand behind Trump. Nearly three-quarters of Republican voters, 74 percent, surveyed on Saturday said party officials should continue to support Trump. Only 13 percent think the party shouldn’t back him.
Still, Hillary Clinton leads Trump in the four-way race for the White House by four points, 42 percent to 38 percent, with eight percent supporting Gary Johnson, three percent supporting Jill Stein and nine percent undecided. Clinton also leads by four in a two-way race, 45 percent to 41 percent.
Operatives in both parties say they believe it will take several days -- and Sunday night's debate at Washington University in St. Louis -- to have the video bake into the public consciousness.
But the new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll is the first scientific survey to gauge voters’ immediate reactions to Trump’s comments. The technology of Morning Consult’s web-panel survey allowed respondents to view both the video in which Trump, off-camera, explicitly describes women who allow him to kiss them and grab their genitals with impunity because of his celebrity – and Trump’s subsequent midnight apology video posted early Saturday morning.
All poll respondents were showed the video in which Trump converses off-camera with then-“Access Hollywood” anchor Billy Bush (coincidentally, a cousin of Trump's former GOP rival, Jeb Bush). Respondents were asked, following the video, to describe how they felt about the clip, on a scale from zero (very negative) to 10 (very positive), with 5 defined as “neutral.”
A 74-percent majority of all voters had a negative reaction to the video – including 47 percent who said their feelings were a zero (very negative). But there’s a partisan element to voters’ reactions to the video: 69 percent of Democratic voters said they had a very negative impression after watching it, but only 22 percent of Republicans gave it a zero rating. Ten percent of Republicans said the video gave them a positive feeling.
An even sharper partisan dynamic exists when voters were asked whether the video gives them a more or less favorable impression of Trump. Among all voters, 61 percent say it makes them feel either somewhat or much less favorable toward Trump, while 28 percent say it doesn’t affect their view of Trump; 8 percent said it makes them feel more favorably toward Trump.
But just 48 percent of GOP voters said it makes them feel less favorably toward Trump, while 36 percent said it doesn’t affect their opinions of Trump.
“As soon as the news broke, we designed a survey that not only tested voter opinion on Trump's comments, but also allowed more than 1,500 voters to react in real time to the video and his apology," said Morning Consult co-founder and Chief Research Officer Kyle Dropp. "The results show that nearly all voters have heard about the video and most rate it negatively, but Trump's supporters are not abandoning him right away.”
Voters completed the survey on Saturday, as GOP lawmakers – some facing challenging campaigns this fall and others in safe seats or not on the ballot this year – raced to announce they either wouldn’t support Trump in November or urged him to withdraw from the race and be replaced on the ballot.
But not only do three-quarters of Republican voters want the party to stand behind Trump, there’s a potential warning in the data for GOP officeholders like Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), who announced Saturday she wouldn’t vote for him: Fewer than a third of voters are willing to give greater consideration to a candidate who un-endorses Trump.
The poll was conducted entirely on Saturday – the day after the Trump video was revealed by The Washington Post. Morning Consult surveyed 1,549 registered voters, with 1,390 likely voters. The margin of error for all results is plus or minus 2 percentage points, and for 3 percentage points for likely voters.
Asked at the outset about the 11-year-old video of Trump released Friday, 42 percent of voters said they had heard “a lot” about it. Another 37 percent said they had heard some things about it, 13 percent said they hadn’t heard much, and 9 percent said they hadn’t heard about it all.
On cable television, Trump’s comments have been covered far more extensively on CNN and MSNBC than they have on Fox News Channel, the preferred outlet for many conservative viewers. Partisan inclination is a key driver even in knowledge of Trump’s comments: More than half of Democrats, 55 percent, said they had heard “a lot” about the Trump video, but only a third of Republicans have heard a lot about it.
Trump’s apology video – a 90-second video posted a few minutes after midnight on Saturday morning – failed to move the needle for most voters. On the same zero-to-10 scale, 47 percent gave Trump’s apology a negative rating, 14 percent gave it a neutral score and the remaining 39 percent gave it a positive rating. Twenty-six percent of voters scored it a zero (very negative), and 13 percent scored it a 10 (very positive).
The apology did help Trump somewhat with Republicans: 65 percent said they view him either very or somewhat more favorably after viewing it. But among all voters, only 37 percent viewed Trump more favorably.
Still, even after viewing both videos as part of the poll’s administration, more voters say Trump shouldn’t drop out of the race, 45 percent, than say he should, 39 percent. More than three-quarters of Republicans, 78 percent, say Trump shouldn’t end his campaign. And more independents, 44 percent, say Trump should stay in the race, compared with only 35 percent who think he should drop out.
A number of high-profile, down-ballot Republican candidates distanced themselves from Trump on Saturday – but there’s little indication voters are preparing to punish continued support for Trump among other candidates. If a GOP candidate continued to support Trump, just 39 percent of voters overall said it would make them somewhat or much less likely to vote for that candidate, compared with 23 percent who said it would make them more likely to vote for that candidate, and 31 percent who said it wouldn’t affect their vote.
But again, GOP voters reacted differently than voters overall. Some Republicans, like Ayotte and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), have for months balanced personal ambivalence toward Trump with efforts to avoid alienating pro-Trump voters in their battleground states. And even after watching the video, 41 percent of GOP voters say continued support for Trump would make them more likely to vote for the down-ballot candidate, while only 12 percent said it would make them less likely to vote for that candidate.
In fact, there’s evidence that cutting Trump loose could hurt Republicans like Ayotte, at least initially. There’s little to gain from bailing on Trump: While 31 percent of voters say renouncing support for Trump after the newly released video would make them more likely to vote for a Republican candidate, 25 percent say it makes them less likely to vote for that candidate. More than a third, 34 percent, say it doesn’t matter either way.
And GOP voters could be prepared to punish Republicans who bail on Trump: 28 percent said it makes them more likely to vote for a candidate who says they can’t support Trump anymore, but 25 percent say it makes them less likely to vote for that candidate. A 41-percent plurality say it won’t affect their vote.
Some of the Republicans who have split from Trump have said they will write in his running mate, Mike Pence – or called for the Republican National Committee to promote Pence to the top of the ticket in an official capacity. But there’s little evidence, at the outset, that move would help Republicans: Clinton holds a 6-point lead over Pence in a hypothetical matchup among likely voters, according to the poll.
While Republican voters are thus far mostly shrugging off Trump’s comments, Sunday’s debate – and Trump’s reaction to questions about what he said and how he feels about and treats women – could reinforce this controversy.
Still, the race on the eve of the debate remains both close and volatile. Clinton’s 4-point lead on the initial ballot test is slightly smaller than her 6-point edge on the four-way ballot in last week’s POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. And, even a month before Election Day, 20 percent of likely voters won’t commit to Clinton or Trump on the initial ballot, either choosing a third-party candidate or saying they are undecided.
Morning Consult is a nonpartisan media and technology company that provides data-driven research and insights on politics, policy and business strategy.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/1...lt-poll-229394
