A raft of new polls shows former President Trump is losing juice among core Republican voters — a rare but unmistakable drop in base support that would jeopardize his 2024 comeback bid.
Trump famously boasted in 2016 that he “could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Over the past seven years, Trump’s iron grip on the GOP base led many political observers to conclude he may have been right.
A new USA Today/Suffolk poll found Trump’s favorability among Republicans dropped from 75% in October to 64% in December — below the 70% threshold generally viewed as a Mendoza line for support within a candidate’s own party.
A Quinnipiac poll out Wednesday puts Trump’s favorability among GOP voters right at 70% — his lowest mark in the survey since March 2016. And a new Wall Street Journal poll has him at 74% — above the Mendoza line, but a 11% decline since March.
Equally troubling for the former president: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is dominating him in a hypothetical head-to-head primary, leading by 23 points (56%–33%) in the Suffolk poll and 14 points (52%–38%) in the WSJ poll.