Donald Trump has surged in the early Republican primary polls, but that doesn’t mean most of the country is willing to take him seriously yet.
A new Gallup poll released on Tuesday found that only 25 percent of Americans think of Trump as a serious candidate. That’s roughly the same amount of people who considered Trump serious in 1999 when he flirted with a run for the presidency under the Reform Party banner.
According to the Gallup poll, Trump received most of his support from Republicans. About 41 percent of Republicans consider his candidacy serious, while just 25 percent of independents and 12 percent of Democrats said the same.
His favorability rating is just a little bit higher.
For half a decade, his popularity has been waning and it now stands at 31 percent, nearly the same number as when he first attempted to run in 1999. About half of Republicans, 29 percent of independents, and 17 percent of Democrats view him positively.
With Trump’s favorability numbers so low, the billionaire’s greatest role in the 2016 campaign may be to move Republican candidates further to the right on trade and immigration, rather than becoming president himself.
