Asked if the party should become more populist, stressing issues like strong borders, protecting jobs from foreign competition and standing tough against crime and social disorder or should become more traditionally conservative, stressing fiscal responsibility, defense and pro-business policies, more than four in 10 Republicans supported the populist side.
Only about a quarter of Republicans said they thought the party should move in the more traditionally conservative direction. Another 13% said the party should remain largely the same as it is today. The Republicans polled included people who said they aligned with the GOP and those who said they were independent or unaffiliated but leaned toward the party.
The polls findings illustrate the dominance Trump has achieved in the party that he conquered as an outsider in 2016. More than four in 10 Republicans said they would like Trump to have more influence in the GOP than he has now. Another third want him to have the same degree of influence. About two in 10 would like him to have less.
Its Trumps party, said Mike Murphy, the veteran Republican strategist and prominent Trump critic who co-directs USCs Center for the Political Future.
Trumps hold on the partys voters has surprised and dismayed Republican elected officials who identify with the partys traditional, business-oriented wing. Many of them initially believed they would be able to limit Trump on issues such as trade and immigration, only to discover that disagreeing with the president put their careers at risk.
Trumps triumph, however, has come at the price of alienating a significant slice of the Republican electorate, the poll shows: Among Republicans, 12% said they would be unhappy to see him reelected.
The possibility of defections among Republicans is something Trump can ill afford: He won his election in 2016 by the slimmest of margins roughly 80,000 votes in three key states out of some 130 million cast nationwide and his policies have mobilized his opponents and driven away a large number of independent voters.
The poll illustrates the steep challenge that Trump faces in winning reelection: A majority of Americans eligible to vote would be unhappy if Trump were reelected, the survey finds. Of those polled, 54% said they would be unhappy, 29% happy, and 16% neither.
Those are daunting numbers for Trump, said Bob Shrum, the longtime Democratic strategist who is the USC centers director.
That, of course, doesnt forecast how the election will end up: Voting remains more than a year away and many Americans who say now that they would be unhappy to see Trump reelected could end up siding with him.
Right now, its a referendum on Trump that hes losing, said Murphy. The question is how it will look once it becomes a binary choice.
Trump already has made clear that a big part of his campaign will aim to convince voters that even if theyre unhappy with him, the Democrats pose too risky a choice.
Whether you love me or hate me, you have got to vote for me, he said last week at a rally in Manchester, N.H., warning that Democrats would ruin the economy by raising taxes and adopting policies he described as socialist. The remarks came just after a sharp decline in the stock market that analysts largely attributed to investor fears over Trumps trade war with China.
The poll findings show how he is starting the campaign with a deficit, said Jill Darling, the surveys director.
