A nationwide poll of Republicans showed that most Republican voters would enter a new political party if former President Donald Trump started one.
GOP voters say they would join a Trump-led new party
There are 64% of Republicans that said they would be willing to join a party like the Trump-formed "Patriot Party" or "MAGA Party"; 32% of that number said they would be very likely to join one.
According to Washington Examiner, 36% of respondents said it was very or perhaps likely that they would quit the GOP. The survey was conducted between Jan. 28-29 among 340 registered Republicans, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5.3 points.
Meanwhile, 15% of Democrats and 28% of independents would likely join the theoretical Trump-centered faction, the survey showed.
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Dritan Nesho, the CEO and chief pollster at HarrisX said these numbers show Trump remains a political force to be reckoned with, despite the Capitol riots. Former President Trump benefits from the diverse base support and makes up more than a third of voters attracted to him on several issues that are still needed to be addressed by, and co-opted by, Republicans and Democratic elites as per Nesho.
Among the voters surveyed, 37% said they would join a new political party the former president would start. Nesho added that polling suggests Trump might reasonably create the second-largest party in the US if he were to split from the GOP and start making his own, knocking the GOP down to the third place.
Trump allegedly proposed forming a new political party last month, but no clear proposal has emerged concerning a third party headed by Trump. Among the 945 eligible voters, 340 self-identified as Republicans; the most recent Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online. It has a +/- 3 percentage point error margin, as per The Hill.
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Trump plots a campaign tour targeting Republican defectors
After the Senate impeachment trial ends, Donald Trump is plotting a campaign revenge tour targeting Republican defectors, sources have reported. According to Business Insider, who quoted six outlets, strategists at Trump's Florida Mar-a-Lago private resort where he now stays are preparing future trips against GOP lawmakers who voted to approve his removal from office.
'I'm sure he needs to get all their names on a roulette wheel,' said one of the Republicans who remain loyal to Trump and his inner circle, as per Daily Mail. As House Democrats plan to make their case that Trump was responsible for the January 6 Capitol protests, the former president is reportedly lying low.
On Thursday, Trump declined a Democratic request to appear in the Senate impeachment trial hearings, which will start on February 9. Trump celebrated his first impeachment acquittal nearly to the day in February of last year by putting up copies of major newspapers proclaiming the results.
Though, the first trial was even closer than the second one it's supposed to be, with only one Republican, Mitt Romney, crossing party lines against the then-president.
The numbers are already higher this year but Nobody in Trump's circle wants him to fail, with Democrats needing two-thirds for a conviction. Yet Trump and his aides are both treading cautiously, knowing that it won't be the best time to wade back into the national debate until after the trial is done.
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