Republican voters are united behind former President Donald Trump and enthusiastic about putting a check on President Joe Biden in 2022 as GOP infighting in Washington fails to translate outside the Beltway.
That is the conclusion of a fresh survey from veteran Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who measured Republican voters’ fidelity to Trump and their intensity as it relates to participation in next year’s midterm elections. Greenberg discovered that three-quarters of the Republican electorate takes its cues from Trump and GOP voters overall are, by 11 percentage points, more interested in 2022 than Democrats.
The data defy initial assumptions that Trump’s dominance over party affairs post-presidency, and headline-grabbing disagreements about this among prominent Republicans in Washington, would be a drag on GOP prospects in the next round of federal elections. Greenberg says the dynamic could sink Democrats running in key contests for the House, Senate, and governorship — in several states.
In a memorandum outlining the poll’s findings, Greenberg wrote that his team was “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.”
“Yes,” he added, “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%. But Democrats’ engagement fell from 85% to 57%. Republicans are following the political theater much more closely than are Democrats.”
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Republicans noticed. Asked Monday for a GOP perspective on Trump’s standing in the party, pollster Tony Fabrizio, who previously advised the former president, simply pointed to Greenberg’s survey. “You might want to look at the Trump numbers in this data from Stanley Greenberg, who is hardly a Trump fan,” emailed Fabrizio, who has studied Republican voters’ attitudes toward the 45th president extensively.
However, Trump’s strong standing in the party is not necessarily converting to lockstep Republican support for a 2024 presidential bid.
Greenberg polled 1,000 registered voters between April 27 and May 3 in critical battleground states and competitive House seats to gauge the impact that voter sentiment might have on the midterm elections. He polled Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, plus 13 districts in California, New Jersey, Texas, and Virginia. Greenberg chose prospective respondents from voter file lists, oversampling 500 Republicans to gather accurate data on party psychology.
The margin of error was plus or minus 3 points.
Greenberg did find at least one bright spot in his poll for Democrats. Biden enjoyed a positive, 49%-45% approval rating, compared to Trump’s net negative 46%-51%, with 9% of Republicans giving the president positive marks.
Presidential approval ratings typically foreshadow party performance in midterm elections. However, the Democrats are defending such thin majorities that Biden’s numbers may have to be exceptionally high to hold off a Republican takeover in 2022.
Democrats hold a majority of approximately five seats in the House. In the Senate, both parties control 50 seats, but Democrats run the chamber courtesy of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. A Republican pollster monitoring the unfolding midterm election environment said that, so far, signs point to the GOP gaining seats, although this strategist emphasized it was too early to make strong predictions.
“If the election was held today, we would take back the Senate and win the House,” this pollster said, pointing to the generic ballot numbers, voter enthusiasm, and a metric for measuring support for administration policies Republican strategists refer to as “gas pedal/brake.” But the pollster also recommended caution. “The election is not being held today, and we have a long way to go.”
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Highlighted findings in Greenberg’s poll include:
- “Trump’s loyalists and aligned voters are 75% of the GOP in the 2022 battleground [as polled by Greenberg] and importantly, are already consolidated and engaged in support of Trump’s unfinished fight for America.”
- “The critical bloc of non-Trump conservatives and moderates is only a quarter of the battleground electorate — compared to 30% in our national poll last month. They are vocal in opposition to Trump, many approve of Biden, and even more could abstain or vote 3rd party.”
- “Trump loyalists, Republicans, and white working-class voters as much more engaged than Democrats, with Trump still able to shape events. High interest is not as high as a presidential year, but it is comparable to 2018, suggesting the era of high turnout elections is not over.”
- “The parties are tied in the generic congressional” ballot, at 45% a piece. Republican strength here is due to “complete consolidation of Republicans, while more Democrats are undecided. Importantly, Democrats are ahead by 3 points in the House seats. Blacks, unmarried women, and probably Asian Americans (AAPI) are delivering, but not Hispanics on and Millennials/Gen-Z voters on turnout.”
- “Democrats [risk failing] to see how Trump’s party is fully engaged with its ongoing culture war, focused on crime, open borders, and defunding the police. Democrats are at risk of repeating 2020 if they do not prioritize defusing and neutralizing it.”
