17% of Democrats Identify More With Trump

Most Republicans continue to identify a lot more with President Trump than with the GOP Congress, while Democrats still strongly agree with their congressional representatives. But nearly one-in-five Democrats are now more likely to agree with Trump.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 36% of all Likely U.S. Voters think Trump’s views are closest to their own when it comes to the major issues facing the country. Forty-two percent (42%) say their views are more in sync with the average Democratic member of Congress. Just 11% say that of congressional Republicans. Another 11% are not sure. This marks little change from January. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Looking closer, we see that 61% of Likely Republican Voters think Trump’s views are closer to their own. Twenty percent (20%) identify more with the average Republican member of Congress, while nine percent (9%) feel closest to the average Democrat.

Seventy-three percent (73%) of Democrats say the views of the average Democrat in Congress are more like theirs. But 17% of voters in the opposition party say they think more like Trump, up from 12% at the start of the year. Unaffiliated voters are by far the most likely to be undecided.

Among all voters, 36% say it’s more important for the president to try to keep other elected Republicans on his side. Twenty-six percent (26%) place more importance on Trump pursuing his own agenda. This compares to 40% and 31% respectively in July of last year. A whopping 38% are now undecided.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on October 21-22, 2019 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Republicans (47%) and Democrats (46%) are in rare agreement that Trump governs more like a third-party president than a traditional Republican, a view shared by 40% of unaffiliated voters.

By a two-to-one margin, Republicans believe it is more important for Trump to try to work with the congressional GOP than to go it alone. Democrats and unaffiliated voters are more likely to be undecided on this question.

Even among voters who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing, 48% say it’s more important for him to work with other Republicans, compared to 41% who place more importance on him pursuing his own agenda.

Eighty-two percent (82%) of voters who Strongly Disapprove of the president’s job performance say they identify most with the average Democratic member of Congress.

Voters remain sure that Trump and the Democratic Party know where they’re headed, but they’re less confident that Republicans in general have a similar focus.

Voters definitely have mixed feelings about Trump’s political savvy, but most think the president listens to voter concerns a lot more than Congress does.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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