Republicans and Republican-leaning pro-independence activists say 63% to 37% say Trump should be the leader of the Republican party. But they are almost divided on whether winning back the former president defeated in 2024 would be an advantage: 51% say Republicans are more likely to run for president again if Trump is the candidate, and 49% say that the party would. better with a different candidate. This is a very different picture from 2019, when more than three-quarters of Republicans said their party had a better shot in 2020 with Trump as a candidate than with a different candidate.
Trump’s support is not evenly distributed throughout the party: 69% of Republicans with no college education believe Trump should lead the party, compared to 49% of those with a college degree. A 72% majority of Conservatives say Trump should lead the party, compared to 49% of the party’s smallest moderate bloc. And 71% of self-identified Republicans want Trump to lead the party, compared to 51% of Republican-leaning independents who say the same.
Most Republicans also see support for Trump – and his false claim to have won the 2020 election – as an important part of his own party identity along with support for conservative principles. About six in ten say supporting Trump and believing he won in 2020 are at least a somewhat important part of what it means to be a Republican for them. More, however, point to more traditional partisan markers, with 69% saying it is at least somewhat important to oppose democratic policies, 81% supporting Republicans in Congress, 85% maintaining conservative values and positions, and a 86% believe the federal government should have less power.
According to the most recent poll, Democratic-leaning Democrats and independents link their identity as Democrats to support progressive policies and more government aid. Perhaps reflecting its status as the current ruling party, Republicans are less likely to emphasize opposition to the other party: 58% say that, as Democrats, it is at least somewhat important to oppose politics. of the Republican Party, 77% support Biden. , 81% to support Democrats in Congress, 84% to hold progressive positions and 93% to believe the federal government should do more to help people.
On the Democratic side, the sharpest divisions coincide with generational and racial lines. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents over the age of 45, for example, are 28 percentage points more likely than their younger counterparts to qualify to support Biden and 22 percentage points more likely to say that supporting Democrats in Congress is very important. Black Democrats are 14 points more likely than white Democrats to say that supporting Biden is very important. And Democrats of color are 12 points more likely than white Democrats to say it’s very important for the federal government to do more to help the people.
Liberal Democrats are more likely than moderates to attach great importance to pursuing progressive policies (32 points), which oppose the Republican Party (14 points), which favor a broader role for the federal government (14 points). ) and who support Congress Democrats (12 points), but show much less division over the importance of staying behind Biden (3 points).
Both Democrats and Republicans are satisfied with the ideological positions their own parties are pointing out. The vast majority of Republicans, 86%, call the mainstream Republican Party; by contrast, 92% of Democrats see their party as the mainstream and 96% say the same of Biden.
Americans are closely divided on their views on the Republican Party, with 51% considering it too extreme and 49% saying it is general. They say, between 54% and 45%, that the Democratic Party is generally general. Only 14% of Americans view both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party as too extreme. Another 31% say only Democrats are too extreme, with 37% saying only Republicans and 17% think both parties are generalists. Biden is considered more popular than his party as a whole: 61% say he is a generalist, compared to 39% who consider him too extreme.
Between 2010 and 2013, the proportion of audiences who rated Democrats as too extreme in the CNN / ORC polls stood at about four out of ten, while the share that said the same about the Party Republican generally rose in that time to a maximum of 56%.
2022 intermediate periods and Congress
In the run-up to next year’s congressional elections, the poll finds that the first preferences in a generic vote are evenly divided, with 45% of registered voters saying they would vote for the Democratic Party candidate and 44 % who would vote for the Republican. Party candidate.
Overall, 28% of voters say they are very excited about voting in Congress next year, up from 18% who reported similar excitement in September 2017, a year before the last midterm elections.
Republican-leaning voters are a little more enthusiastic about voting in next year’s contest than Democratic-leaning voters (30% on the Republican side, 26% on the Democratic side) and both parties are the who have a stronger ideological tendency. enthusiastic (38% of very liberal Democratic voters and 44% of very conservative Republican voters say they are extremely enthusiastic).
But where Democrats are largely happy with their current leadership in Congress, Republicans (especially those with weak ties to the party) are less satisfied. The majority of self-identified Republicans, 58%, approve of their party’s congressional leadership. But among independents leaning toward the Republican party, that number drops sharply to 29 percent. By contrast, 83% of Democrats approve of their party’s congressional leadership, as do 69% of democratically lean independents.
In general, Americans reject leaders in the Democratic Congress with a margin of 10 percentage points, from 55% to 45%, and Republican leaders with a wider margin of 38 points, from 69% to 31%. This is a change from 2019, when CNN polls found congressional leaders on both sides with identical scores.
The new CNN survey was conducted by SSRS from August 3 to September 7 online and by telephone among a random sample of 2,119 adults recruited from an address-based sample.