Donald Trump may have had a bad end to his 2022, but he’s been crushing the GOP primary polls for months now. This is despite all those indictments, despite doing things like burying his late wife on a golf course, and despite not being able to spell simple words like “rumor.” (Or “hamburger.”) But a new Emerson College poll shows a rare dip in his polling, which may be due to skipping the polls or getting arrested.
As noted by Newsweek, the new poll shows Trump with 50 percent backing among GOP voters. That may sound like a lot, and it’s still head and shoulders over his second place rival, Ron DeSantis, who’s at 12 — a big descent from hit peak at 29 back in January.
But Trump himself has fallen, too. His polling peaked April, when he rose all the way up to 62, when DeSantis was a mere 16. The former president’s polling has been in a steady, if not steep, decline ever since, hitting 59 in June and at 56 on August 19, just a week-and-a-half ago. Now he’s at 50, the lowest he’s had since Emerson started this polling last June, when Trump entered at a robust 55.
This is just one poll, but it suggests that, despite Trump’s beliefs that racking up criminal charges only makes him stronger, that maybe he’s not as Teflon as he once was. What could account for him shedding six points in less than 10 days? In that time, Trump famously skipped the first GOP debate, instead sitting down for a very dull chit-chat with Tucker Carlson. He also turned himself into a jail in Fulton County, Georgia, where he made dubious history.
Maybe GOP voters are finally considering moving on from the guy who helped foment a failed coup. Perhaps they’re eyeing a move to Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s polling at 9, just behind DeSantis, and who cemented his status in the Grand Old Party by pulling a Ted Cruz and making one of his favorite artists hates his guts.
(Via Newsweek)