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(CNN) - President Donald Trump is facing a possible recall. Fortunately for him, his base of very conservative Republicans in the Senate will probably save him from being removed from office.
But the September CNN / SSRS polls suggest that Trump should be more concerned about a part of the Republican Party that receives less notoriety: the more moderate part. This part of the party will not play an important role in the political trial procedures, but their feelings towards the political trial and about Trump in general could harm his attempt to re-election.
- CNN survey. Support for a political trial against Trump grows between independents and Republicans
The yearning to make a political trial and a Trump impeachment process has increased significantly among potential moderate and liberal Republicans (that is, Republicans and independent inclined Republicans). In the most recent CNN poll, nearly a third of potential moderate / liberal Republicans said last week they wanted Trump to be dismissed and taken out of office, while about two-thirds didn't want that. At the end of May, the division was 16% in favor of removal and removal and 81% against. This is a statistically significant movement.
The apparent change in this Republican bloc of moderate / liberal potential should not be too surprising, given what a different CNN survey found in early September. In that survey, 25% of potential moderate / liberal Republicans disapproved of the work Trump was doing as president. Only 69% approved it. Trump's job approval ratings with this moderate / liberal Republican bloc resemble the percentage that want him dismissed and removed.
Now let's compare what is happening with the very conservative part of the Republican Party. Among those who are very conservative and can be classified as potential Republicans, Trump is still a very popular president. His approval rating in the CNN poll at the beginning of September among very conservative potential Republicans was 94%, about 25 points higher than his rating with the moderate to liberal wing of the party.
Obviously, we should not expect moderate and liberal Republicans to be as behind the president as very conservative Republicans. Those towards the center of the ideological spectrum are more likely to go against their party.
- Trump's allies are worried because he doesn't understand the seriousness of the political trial fight
Still, this is a poor performance for Trump.
In perspective, 85% of potential moderate / conservative Democrats and 98% of very liberal potential Democrats disapproved of the work Trump was doing in our CNN poll in early September. This is a 13-point gap that goes from left to right within the group. On the Republican side, the gap is approximately double that from left to right within the party.
Not surprisingly, very conservative potential Republicans have been much less likely to support political judgment than moderate / liberal potential Republicans. The trend line on political judgment is very different between very conservative potential Republicans and moderate / liberal potential Republicans. In May, 2% of them wanted Trump to be dismissed and removed from office. Today, 1% of this block wants Trump to be dismissed and removed from office.
In other words, Trump's base is intact and doesn't really move. The noisiest part of his party will support him, and it is a group that is now made up of many more Republicans in Congress than it used to be. That is why the possibility of Trump being dismissed from office is minimal, and he can make Trump believe he can count on more Republicans in his re-election attempt than he really should.
The problem for the president is that in the royal electorate, potential moderate and liberal Republicans represent approximately the same 25% -30% of potential Republicans as conservatives. (The other 40% of the party is made up of somewhat conservative voters.)
- Look: What is a political trial, how does it work and who makes the decisions?
When you go deeper into the cross-reference tables, you see that moderate and liberal Republicans may even have more power than national polls indicate. In a combined sample of Republicans from Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the polls for the 2018 midterm elections, approximately 40% called themselves moderate or liberal. These, of course, were the great states that changed the electoral school in 2016.
Now, I don't want to exaggerate the role of a group of voters that constitute, at most, one third of the Republican Party. But when you look at math, something will have to yield to Trump: or he will need to win a significantly larger portion of moderate / liberal Republicans than these numbers suggest he is capable of winning, or the Democratic candidate will have to perform poorly among Democrats. .
Because unless something happens, it's hard to imagine Trump winning when only a little more than two-thirds of potential moderate / liberal Republicans approve of the work he is doing in office and almost a third want him removed and removed from his position. position.
Donald Trump political trial
