The sample sizes are smaller when we look at Republicans and Democrats, making it too early to reach definitive conclusions about the impact of the statement on Trump’s image among these two partisan groups. But we do see, based on the results so far, that Trump’s image among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents did indeed edge down after the statement, with a seven-percentage-point drop in his net favorable rating. At the same time, his net favorable rating went up by 10 points among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. Not shown in the table below are the “pure independents” — that small group of about 12% of the U.S. population who are independent and don’t lean in either direction and/or who don’t provide a party ID at all. These individuals’ opinions of Trump also have improved since Dec 7.
It’s not clear to me why the Muslim ban controversy would make Democrats more positive about Trump than before, while making his image less positive among Republicans. These are all small changes, I should underscore, and it is going to take a while before we know if there is a lasting impact. Still, at this juncture, we can say that Trump has not helped himself with Republicans — presumably his more immediate objective, since he has to win the GOP nomination before he can run in the general election.
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