Despite Controversy, GOP is Trump’s Party

By Jonathan Brown and Paul Mitchell

According to our exclusive Capitol Weekly / #CA120 poll before tonights Presidential Debate, rank-and-file Republican voters in California are circling the wagons behind Presidential nominee Donald Trump, even as GOP party leaders and elected officials condemn Trump, with some calling on him to step down.

The scandal regarding the recently-released audio of Trump making vulgar comments about women and sexual assault shows the disconnect between voters and party leaders.

More than three-in-four California Republicans (76%) are voting for Trump.  These results are in line with the most recent PPIC (Trump 73%) and Field Poll (Trump 84%) results though both of those polls were conducted before the first debate.

These Trump supporters are dug in.  On a variety of measurements, we found between three-fourths and four-fifths of Republicans siding with Trump and minimizing the impact of the scandal.

• While the party leaders are expressing shock at Trumps remarks, around four-in-five Republican voters say they were not surprised by Trumps comments.  Republican Women are no less surprised than men
• Nearly four-in-five Republicans say that the recordings either have little importance to the 2016 campaign (39%) or are an attempt by the media to destroy Trump (40%), while only 21% say that the comments make it hard to support him (8%) or reinforced my negative views of Trump. (13%)
• Seven-in-ten California Republicans do not want to see Trump endorsers jump ship.  They agree that removing support now is damaging to the Party and issues I care about.
• Only 3% of Republicans say they are less likely to vote now with nearly half describing themselves as more committed to voting in the wake of the scandal.

Something that should concern those on the ballot with Trump 68% of his supporters say they will hold candidates for Congress accountable for their position on the Presidential race.  Only 3% of these Trump supporters agree that they wouldnt blame a candidate for removing their support after this controversy.  An overwhelming 92% of Trump supporters believe Republican officials should support Trump and removing support now is damaging to the Party and issues they care about.

On the other side, Republicans who are against Trump are much more accepting of Republican candidates who support him. Only 42% of Republican voters who are supporting other candidates say they will hold candidates accountable for their Trump endorsements. A majority of these Republicans opposed to Trump understand the need for candidates to support him prior to this controversy, and their decisions to change their support now.

Its hard to make any grand pronouncements in an election with as many unexpected twists and turns as we have seen this year, but these results show, at this moment, the Republican Party is the Trump Party.  Better than three-in-five say that Trumps previous controversial statements about Mexican immigrants either are not troubling or make me want to vote for him more. A similar percentage feel the same way about Trumps praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin

The moves by party leaders to denounce and remove Trump place them at odds with their rank-and-file.  It would seem a risky political strategy by any Republican candidate to denounce Trumptoday. But who knows what tomorrow holds in this election.

Poll Results can be viewed in full raw form here: https://www.research.net/results/SM-PSC6CPTX/

The survey is among more than 600 registered Republican Voters, selected randomly from the voter file, and considered likely to vote in the November General Election. The poll was conducted via online survey by voters responding to an email from Open California.

UC Berkeley student Alan Yan contributed to this story.