Latest Poll Shows One in Eight People Who Voted for Trump is Having Second Thoughts

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll of 2016 voters, about one in eight people who voted for President Donald Trump have now stated that they are not sure they would do so again after witnessing his tumultuous first six months in office.

The poll surveyed voters who had told Reuters/Ipsos on Election Day how they had cast their ballots. While other surveys have measured varying levels of disillusionment amongst supporters of President Trump, the Reuters/Ipsos poll shows how many would go as far as changing the way that they voted. The survey was carried out first in May and then again in July.

In the July survey, 12 percent of responders stated that they would not vote for President Trump “if the 2016 presidential election were held today;” with 7 percent stating that they “don’t know” what they would do and the remaining 5 percent stating that they would either support one of the other 2016 presidential candidates or not vote. Eight-eight percent stated that they would vote for President Trump again – a slight improvement over the May figure which stood at 82 percent. Taken together, the polls suggest the President Trump’s standing with his base has improved slightly over the past few months despite the Republican Party’s repeated failures to overhaul the healthcare systems and multiple congressional and federal investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia.

The minority of voters who supported President Trump and who have now said that they would not vote for him again gave varying reasons in interviews for whey they had changed their minds. Some were tired of his daily trolling of the Democrats, the media and the judiciary. Some were disappointed that the Trump administration has not yet swept illegal immigrants out of their communities, while others have stated that the president has not ended the mistrust and hyper-partisanship in Washington as much as they had hoped.

While most of the people who voted for Trump on 8 November stated that they would back him again, the erosion of support within his winning coalition of older, disaffected, mostly white voters poses a potential challenge for the president. President Trump, who won the White House with the slimmest of margins, needs every last supporter behind him to push his agenda through a divided Congress and potentially win a second term in office in 2020.