Poll: GOP voters declare fealty to Trump as partisanship intensifies

In the last Post-ABC poll, two weeks ago, Trump captured only 78 percent of Republicans, with 10 percent voting for Libertarian Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico. Now Trump gets 83 percent, and Johnson’s share of Republicans has been cut to 5 percent. That movement has come largely from Republicans who did not back Trump in the primaries: Two weeks ago, 22 percent of Republicans who didn’t back Trump in the primaries were going to vote for Johnson. Now it’s only 8 percent. And Republicans are buying into Trump campaign spin: Fifty-three percent are fine with Trump refusing to release his tax returns, which are essential to determining his fitness for the presidency, yet 52 percent believe that Clinton should not have kept her pneumonia diagnosis a secret. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans think Clinton is “appealing to people’s prejudices”; only 37 percent say the same about Trump.

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Of course, there is clear partisanship on both sides. Clinton gets over 80 percent support among Democrats (and 88 percent in a two-way race). Seventy-four percent of all respondents plan to watch the first presidential debate on Monday, but only 6 percent say there’s a “good chance” it will change their mind.

Overall, the closeness of the race may worry Clinton supporters. But the flip side is that, even after consolidating Republicans — not a guarantee earlier in the cycle — Trump still trails by two points, and at the state level Clinton retains mid-single-digit or greater leads in 272 electoral votes’ worth of states. With so many voters already set on their choice, even a small lead at this point in the campaign is likely to stick.

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