Nearly half of Trump voters say they would abandon the GOP if the former president formed his own Party as Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he wouldn’t support him if he ran in 2024
- A new poll released Sunday shows 46 per cent of Trump voters would ditch the Republican Party if the former president created his own political party
- Trump will be speaking at CPAC as he returns to the political scene two weeks after his second impeachment acquittal
- Half of the supporters surveyed say the GOP should be more loyal to Trump
- Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson told CNN hat Trump ‘should not define the future’ of the GOP
- He said if the former president ran again in 2024 he would not support him
A new poll Sunday shows 46 per cent of Donald Trump‘s voters would ditch the Republican Party if he formed his own political party – as some GOP lawmakers continue to break with the former president.
The Suffolk University/USA TODAY survey shows 27 per cent of respondents – those who voted for Trump in 2020 – would stick with the GOP even if Trump created his own party, while another 27 per cent say they are unsure what they would do.
Rumors emerged shortly after Trump left office on January 20 that he was considering creating his own party separate from the GOP focusing on an ‘America first’ agenda. His team quickly snuffed out those whispers, however, as the Senate impeachment trial loomed and there were fears Republican senators could turn against him.
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson said Sunday that Trump ‘should not define our [GOP’s] future’ and said if the former president did run for the White House again in 2024, he would not support him.
‘No, I wouldn’t. It’s time,’ Hutchinson told CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ in regards to the GOP looking forward.
A new poll released Sunday shows 46 per cent of Trump voters would ditch the Republican Party if the former president created his own political party
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (right) told CNN hat Trump ‘should not define the future’ of the GOP, and said if the former president ran again in 2024 he would not support him
‘He’s got a good family. I have worked with Ivanka and others, and they love America,’ the Republican governor continued. ‘But I would not support him for reelection in 2024. He’s going to have a voice, but – as former presidents do – but there’s many voices in the party.’
‘He should not define our future,’ Hutchinson said. ‘We have got to define it for ourself.’
The governor also warned: ‘He will only define our party if we let him define our party.’
Of the 1,000 Trump supporters polled February 15-19, one in five said the party should ditch Trump and realign themselves more with establishment Republicans, while half say the party should enhance their loyalty to the former president.
‘We feel like Republicans don’t fight enough for us, and we all see Donald Trump fighting for us as hard as he can, every single day,’ a 27-year-old Republican from Milwaukee, Brandon Keidl,from Milwaukee, said in an interview after his poll. ‘But then you have establishment Republicans who just agree with establishment Democrats and everything, and they don’t ever push back.’
The poll had a margin of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Fifty-four per cent of those polled say that they feel more loyalty to Trump than to the Republican Party.
Another indication of the GOP leaning more into the Trumpism of the Party is this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference.
Half of the 1,000 Trump supporters surveyed say the party should become more loyal to Trump
The annual meeting of conservatives will start Thursday and end Friday in Orlando, Florida. Trump will make remarks at the conference on the final day as the keynote speaker – his first public appearance since leaving Washington on January 20.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, on the other hand, declined an invite to speak at the conference this year.
‘I think it’s fine for CPAC to invite former President Trump to speak, but how about the other voices, Senator Cassidy from Louisiana, those that have different points of view, still arch-conservatives, but a different voice for the future of our party?’ Hutchinson lamented. ‘And so that’s what we have got to embrace.’
‘He has a loud megaphone,’ he said of Trump, ‘but we have to have many different voices. And, in my view, we can’t let him define us for the future, because that would just further divide our country. And it would hurt our Republican Party.’