Nearly 1 in 4 Republicans Don’t Want Trump as the Republican Nominee

The new poll comes from Trump’s favorite pollster.

Over the past four years, President Trump has remade the GOP in his image, but according to a new conservative-leaning poll, his grip on some Republican voters may finally be slipping. Nearly one in four said they think Trump should not be the party’s nominee in November.

The new poll from Rasmussen Reports—which has become Trump’s favorite pollster for its notoriously Trump-friendly polls—found that 23% of likely Republican voters in the United States said that the GOP should find “someone other than Trump to be their nominee.” Seventy percent said the party should stick with Trump, while 7% were undecided. 

Despite the preference of a sizable minority that Republicans nominate someone else, fully 95% of respondents surveyed said they expect Trump to be their nominee, with 85% saying it’s “very likely.”  

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Men were more likely than women to believe Trump was the right candidate for the GOP and voters under 40 were the strongest believers that Republicans need to nominate someone other than Trump. The poll found that Black voters and other non-white voters held that view more than whites do.

Rasmussen’s survey also found that Trump’s approval ratings among all voters fell from 49% in February to 45% in April, as he struggled to guide the nation through the worsening coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 1.4 million Americans and killed more than 85,000. Rasmussen’s daily surveys have found that Trump’s approval has rebounded slightly in recent days, but other polls have found his approval rating continuing to fall. A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released Tuesday finds that more than half of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. 

Trump’s rocky poll numbers come as he has ramped up pressure on states to reopen businesses and ease coronavirus-related restrictions, despite warnings from public health officials that doing so could lead to spikes in COVID-19 cases. Trump’s decision to prioritize reopening the economy over public health appears to have substantially hurt his standing with seniors, a key voting block for Republicans. A recent Morning Consult poll found that Trump’s approval rating among voters over the age of 65 dropped 20 points between March and the end of April, with nearly six out of seven seniors saying that containing the spread of coronavirus was more important than focusing on the economy.

RELATED: Trump’s Support Among Older Voters Is Deteriorating

Another possible factor in Trump’s freefall is that voters simply don’t believe what he says. Only 23% of Americans said they have a great deal or quite a bit of trust in the information that Trump provides on the coronavirus, according to an April Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll.

Trump’s falling approval ratings stand to benefit his opponent and the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Joe Biden, who has led Trump in nearly every single national poll since the beginning of April. 

But much like Trump, Biden doesn’t have universal support among Democrats. Rasmussen’s survey found that 28% of likely Democratic voters want their party to find someone other than Biden to be their nominee. Fifty-four percent disagree, while 18% aren’t sure. Despite some uncertainty, 92% of Democrats believe it’s likely Biden will be their nominee. 

Rasmussen’s telephone and online survey of 1,000 likely voters was conducted from May 12-13. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.