Widening ‘Trump Gap’ Presents GOP with a Problem

“A widen­ing dis­tance between per­spect­ives about Don­ald Trump among Re­pub­lic­ans and all oth­er voters—the Trump gap—presents GOP lead­ers with a conun­drum as the primar­ies ap­proach,” Ron Brownstein writes.

“Re­pub­lic­an par­tis­ans and some oth­er con­ser­vat­ive-lean­ing con­stitu­en­cies are demon­strably warm­ing in their at­ti­tudes to­ward the blustery busi­ness ex­ec­ut­ive. But views of Trump gen­er­ally re­main stag­nant, or are even de­teri­or­at­ing, among adults who identi­fy as Demo­crats or in­de­pend­ents. With­in that mix, the groups at the core of the co­ali­tion that powered Pres­id­ent Obama’s two vic­tor­ies ex­press es­pe­cially tox­ic opin­ions about him.”

“The dy­nam­ic sug­gests that more Re­pub­lic­ans are grow­ing com­fort­able with the pro­spect of Trump win­ning the party nom­in­a­tion, even as res­ist­ance to him is so­lid­i­fy­ing among the voters he would need to win the gen­er­al elec­tion.”