In politics, everybody loves a winner. Despite winning fewer than half of all votes cast in the Republican primaries in 2016, through his subsequent nomination and victory in the presidential election Donald Trump has largely consolidated the support of Republican voters, with a job approval among Republicans that has remained around 90% in Gallup polling.
But that has not stopped the steady stream of speculation that perhaps Trump could be vulnerable to a primary challenge from a group including former right-wing radio host Joe Walsh, former congressman and Gov. Mark Sanford, and former Gov. Bill Weld. They argue that Trump’s unorthodox personality and policy views make him a poor fit for the Republican Party even today and think Republican voters are open to turning that page.
What to make of these primary challengers? While there is polling suggesting some Republican voters may like the idea of having a few options to choose from, there’s little evidence to suggest Trump is actually vulnerable, even if a more prominent Republican were to jump into the race.
Let’s put Trump’s standing with Republicans in context. His overall job approval sits in the low 40s on average and has remained extraordinarily stable for months. This puts his job approval about on-par with Barack Obama’s at this point in late summer 2011.
But underneath the hood, the numbers aren’t quite the same. Obama’s job approval among Democrats at this stage was only 75%, according to Gallup. That same week in late August 2011, he averaged 35% with independents and 11% with Republicans. Trump today has almost the same job approval with independents, but among Democrats, his approval clocks in at a mere 4%. Making up the difference? That much higher approval among Republicans.
Obama and Trump had the same job approval at this stage in the game, including among independents. Barack Obama actually had weaker job approval among his own partisans than Trump does now. Yet, at no point during the lead-up to the 2012 election was attention really paid to the prospect of Obama being primaried.
Nonetheless, there have been a number of polls trying to unpack whether or not Trump is vulnerable to a primary challenge by asking Republicans if they’d like to see a challenge emerge. Pew Research Center notably took a look at this question a few months ago and found that while a majority of Republicans said they did not want someone to challenge Trump, over 4 in 10 said they would like to see a challenge.
But wanting options is not the same as pledging to actually choose a different option. It’s common in polls of all sorts for people to say they’d like more options to choose from. You may support your local deli adding some new sandwiches to the menu, but that doesn’t mean you actually intend to order something besides your usual.
Finally, there’s the way that Trump has reshaped Republican voter preferences to match his. At the start of the Trump presidency, just north of 60% of Republicans supported “the Wall,” a number that expanded to north of 80% as of earlier this year. Republicans have moved away from supporting a restrained executive branch, wavered on free trade, and are even more likely these days to view Russia as friendly. Trump’s Republican critics often note the way he breaks with the party’s long-standing views on key issues; many Republican voters meanwhile adapt their own views to match their presidents’ views.
This isn’t to say that Republicans love and endorse everything Trump does. Majorities of Republicans say sometimes Trump’s statements make them feel concerned or embarrassed. Even those Republicans who are disgruntled with the tweets, the temperament, or the tariffs aren’t necessarily looking to toss Trump overboard and start over, and in states like New Hampshire where independents can participate and shake things up, a hotly contested Democratic primary is likely to consume all the oxygen.
Primary challengers to Trump may provide fodder for cable news segments, but they’re trying to meet a demand that largely doesn’t exist among the Republican primary electorate.
