Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say, 63% to 37%, that Trump should be the leader of the Republican Party. But they are about evenly split over whether having the defeated former President back on the ticket in 2024 would be an advantage: 51% say that Republicans have a better chance of retaking the presidency if Trump is the nominee, with 49% saying the party would be better off with a different nominee. That’s a very different landscape from 2019, when more than three-quarters of Republicans said their party had a better shot in 2020 with Trump as their nominee than they would with a different candidate.

Trump’s support isn’t equally distributed throughout the party: 69% of Republicans without a college degree think Trump should head the party, compared with 49% of those who hold a college degree. A 72% majority of conservatives say Trump should head the party, compared to 49% among the smaller bloc of moderates in the party. And 71% of self-identified Republicans want Trump to lead the party, compared with 51% of Republican-leaning independents who say the same.

Most Republicans also consider support for Trump — and his false claim to have won the 2020 election — to be an important part of their own partisan identity alongside support for conservative principles.