Voters Don’t See Pence As A Trump Replacement
Voters don’t think Vice President Mike Pence would do a better job than Donald Trump and say even if he did become chief executive, the media would be nearly as biased against him as they are against Trump.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just 26% of Likely U.S. Voters believe Pence would make a better president than Trump. A plurality (45%) disagrees and says the former Indiana governor and congressman would not make a better chief executive. Slightly more (29%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Forty-three percent (43%), however, say Pence would make a better president than Hillary Clinton, last year’s failed Democratic presidential nominee. Fifty percent (50%) disagree.
Only 12% of voters think most reporters would try to help Pence pass his agenda if he became president. Just 10% say most reporters are trying to help Trump, but 48% said most were trying to help President Obama pass his agenda in 2010 when Rasmussen Reports first asked this question.
Thirty-seven percent (37%) say most reporters would try to block President Pence’s agenda. Just 42% feel they would simply try to report the news in an unbiased manner.
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on July 16-17, 2017 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.
Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters said in mid-April that Pence is qualified to assume the responsibilities of the presidency.
Interestingly, there is little partisan disagreement about Pence’s fitness to replace Trump in the White House. Roughly a quarter of Republicans, Democrats and voters not affiliated with either major party believe the vice president would make a better president.
When it comes to Clinton, though, 77% of GOP voters say Pence would make a better president; 81% of Democrats and unaffiliateds by a 48% to 42% margin disagree.
The majority (54%) of Republicans also think most reporters would try to block Pence from passing his agenda if he was president, a view shared by only 21% of Democrats and 38% of unaffiliated voters.
Among voters who think Pence would make a better president than Trump, 61% say most reporters would try to report the news of his agenda in an unbiased manner.
Just 10% of voters who Strongly Approve of the job Trump is doing feel Pence would be a better chief executive. That compares to 35% of those who Strongly Disapprove of the current president’s job performance, but slightly more (38%) of these voters disagree.
Among all voters, Trump earned a monthly job approval rating of 46% in June. His monthly rating had been steadily falling from a high of 51% in February, his first full month in office, but went up a point last month.
Trump’s agenda continues to be strongly supported by Republicans and just as strongly opposed by Democrats. The Democratic opposition and the media are also much more interested in any ties between the Trump team and the Russian government.
In light of Democratic losses in this year’s special congressional elections, most voters continue to believe that it’s bad for America and bad for the Democratic Party if Democrats resist everything Trump does. But a majority of Democratic voters think the opposite is true.
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of all voters say America is a more divided nation after Trump’s first few months in office.
Fifty percent (50%) of voters – and 76% of Republicans – think most reporters are biased against the president.
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on July 16-17, 2017 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.
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