Path 2: People work to weaken Trump’s support
The second potential path that could produce a strong challenge to Trump is if the various blocs in the GOP who are unhappy with the president to come together and embrace an alternative.
The first reason this is even a remote possibility is that Trump’s staunch support among Republicans isn’t all that it seems. Some political scientists have concluded that a bloc of Trump detractors who were once Republicans are now describing themselves as independents. Pew Research Center data suggests that a big bloc of people under 30 in particular have left the Republican Party in the Trump era. If many Republicans who dislike Trump are removing themselves from the sample, that would boost his average among those who remain. So if calling yourself a Republican essentially means that you like Trump, of course Trump’s approval rating is very high among Republicans.
In addition, we are in an era of rising partisan polarization, where voters, more than ever, tell pollsters they love the president when he or she comes from their party but hate presidents from the other party. Gallup data suggests that Trump is more popular among Republicans than Ronald Reagan was at this stage of his presidency. I wasn’t covering politics in 1982, but I’m not actually sure Trump is more beloved among Republicans right now than Reagan was then. I wonder if the Trump approval data is just telling us that Republican voters are more loyal to their party now — and that they would be just as loyal to another Republican if he or she became the party’s nominee.
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