Who’s to blame? GOP’s favorability ratings on steep decline and many blame ‘The Donald’
Republican Party least favorability ratings in nearly a quarter century
62% of those surveyed have unfavourable view of the GOP
Half year decline from 79% to 68% in favorability among party faithful attributed to rise of presidential frontrunner Donald Trump
The Republican Party’s favorability ratings keep declining, even among those within the party itself, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center.
The party is now the most unpopular it’s been since 1992, with 62% of those surveyed saying that they have an unfavorable view of the GOP. That represented a decrease from October, when 58% of respondents had an unfavorable view of the party.
Pew Research reported that the decline in favorability since the fall “has largely come among Republicans themselves: In the current survey, 68% of Republicans view their party positively, down from 79% last fall.”
The decline coincides with the emergence of Donald Trump, the party’s likely presidentiall nominee in the 2016 election. However, this decline in favorability is not limited to the Republican Party. The Democratic establishment is also witnessing a similar decline in popularity, but Its favorability ratings haven’t changed since the fall. Fewer people have a negative opinion of Democrats, 45% of those surveyed had a favorable impression of the party, and 50% had an unfavorable impression.
Democrats are also happier with their own party than Republicans, with 88% saying they view their party positively, compared to 68% of Republicans for the GOP.
These poll numbers come amid reports of an increasingly fractured GOP. Some pundits have blamed the party’s problems on the controversial candidacy of Trump, who has basically hijacked the soulof the GOP base, capturing their imagination with his unabashedly nativist rhetoric. The situation has creatinged the equivalent of a lobbed grenade within the GOP establishment as they are left in the quandry of supporting a likely winning candidate, whom they despise or risk losing a signifacant portion of the base altogather, in 2016
Though many voters have rallied behind Trump and his message, others within the party have taken issue with his unorthodox views and said that he doesn’t represent the Republican Party as a whole.
The chart below shows the trend in favorability ratings for each party:
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