Republicans Have 11 Point Advantage in New 2022 Election Poll
A new sampling revealing the mood of American voters finds Republicans ready to fight back in the 2022 elections.
A Democracy Corps poll found that Republicans have rallied around former President Donald Trump, according to a memo published by Stanley Greenberg of Greenberg Research.
The bottom line was that 18 months out from the mid-term elections, Republicans are more focused on the political battle ahead than Democrats by an 11-point margin.
Greenberg noted that “it is painfully clear Donald Trump, Lindsey Graham, and Kevin McCarthy know their party. The Trump loyalists who strongly approve of him are two-thirds of those who identify as, ‘Republican.'”
Adding in those who are aligned with the former president, Trump supporters “form a breathtaking, three quarters of the party in the electoral battleground states and districts that will decide who leads the country.”
The survey noted that contrary to media depictions of a divided GOP — a characterization that flourished last week amid the House GOP’s decision to jettison Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming from her leadership position — there is tremendous unity in the ranks.
“We were also surprised by how much Donald Trump’s loyalist party is totally consolidated at this early point in its 2022 voting and how engaged it is,” the memo said.
Republicans are far more engaged than Democrats, the memo added, noting that a presidential election creates a spike in interest.
“Yes, they have pulled back from historic presidential year levels: the percent scoring 10, the highest level of interest in the election, has fallen from 84 to 68 percent. But Democrats’ engagement fell from 85 percent to 57 percent. Republicans are following their political theater much more closely than are Democrats — producing an 11-point gap,” the memo said.
“And with such high early engagement of Republicans and white working class voters in this survey, it means the era of Donald Trump shaping the electorate is not over either,” Greenberg wrote.
The survey found that although some mock Trump for his continued focus on the 2020 election, many Republicans remain irate over “Blacks and Democratic politicians in the cities using illegal voting procedures and stuffing ballot boxes to steal away Trump’s great victory his battle to save America.”
“This survey shows what are the true drivers of GOP identity — the deep hostility to Black Lives Matter, undocumented immigrants, and Antifa. And imagine their reaction to the flood of unaccompanied children at the border, the guilty verdict in Minneapolis, and Black Lives Matter protests after each police shooting of unarmed Blacks,” the memo said.
“The Trump loyalists — again, two-thirds of the party — respond with deep emotion to the term, ‘MAGA,’ that captures their whole embrace of Trump’s battle to make America great again. And it is an unfinished battle and campaign.”
Democracy Now conducted a phone poll of 1,000 registered voters, with an oversample of 500 Republicans, between April 27 and May 3, 2021, from a voter-file sample. The poll reported a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.
The new survey shared common ground with a CBS News poll that found 67 percent of Republicans polled said President Joe Biden was not the legitimate winner of the 2020 election.
The poll also found that 66 percent of Republicans said it was important for the party to remain loyal to Trump, and 80 percent of the Republicans who were aware of the issue said Cheney deserved to be ousted from leadership positions in the party.
This prompted a response from Trump.
“Breaking News! New polling by CBS News on the state of the Republican Party (which is very strong!). ‘President Trump has a strong hold on the GOP.’ 80% of Republicans agree with the removal of Liz Cheney from GOP Leadership and only 20% disagree,” the former president said in a statement on his website.
“The poll also showed that 67% of Republicans said that they do not consider Sleepy Joe Biden to be the legitimate winner of the 2020 Presidential Election. I agree with them 100%, just look at the facts and the data — there is no way he won the 2020 Presidential Election!”
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