Donald Trump is historically strong with his base and that is his problem
Both polls show that Trump significantly led self-determined Republicans: 93% to Biden’s 5% (Monmouth) and 92% to 4% (NBC News / Wall Street Journal).
What is the point: Trump has made the game clear about satisfying the Republican base during his presidency, and a poll shows that this effort is clearly worth it. His base does not leave him, even if his total number is weak.
Trump’s problem is that he used that support tank quite a bit.
As of 2000, no Republican had ever supported more than 91% of Republicans in the ABC News / Washington Post polls. The average Republican had 84% of Republicans behind him. A strategy based on the first election in that election made much more sense than that during the Trump era.
(The historical nature of these numbers holds true if we include independents who rely on Republicans.)
Where Trump is weak he is outside the Republican base. In the ABC / Washington Post (figures similar to Monmouth and NBC News / Wall Street Journal), Trump is at 39% among independents and 3% among Democrats. Both are currently lower than any Republican in the 2000 ABC News / Washington Post polls.
In other words, there is much more potential support for Trump outside the underlying Republican base. Trump, however, does not seem interested in making the effort.
Continuing his basic strategy, Trump ensures he won’t see the bottom fall out. The discovery, however, that actually accumulating the coalition needed to win will be extremely difficult.
This story was updated to include the results of a survey by the NBC News / Wall Street Journal published on Sunday.
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