Poll: one-third GOP want new direction

Donald Trump still dominates the Republican coalition, but a new national poll suggests a sizable minority of GOP-aligned voters want the party’s next presidential nominee to move away from him. A New York Times/Siena poll released on May 19 found that 55% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents want the 2028 Republican nominee to follow Trump’s lead on most issues, while 37% said they want a different direction. The result underpins social-media claims that more than one-third of GOP voters are looking past Trump, but it does not show a majority break with him. The same survey also found Trump remained broadly popular with Republican voters even as other national polling shows weakness on the economy. ### Which poll is behind the “one-third” claim? The May 19 New York Times/Siena survey is the source for the claim. The poll’s toplines say it surveyed 1,507 registered voters from May 11 through May 15. The most-cited number from that survey is 37%. That was the share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who said the GOP’s 2028 presidential nominee should not follow Trump’s lead, while 55% said the next nominee should. ### How much of the GOP still wants Trump’s approach? Self-identified Republicans in the Times/Siena poll remained much more supportive of Trump than the broader Republican-plus-leaner coalition. (nytimes.com) Among Republicans, 65% said they wanted the next nominee to continue Trump’s approach, while 26% preferred a different direction. The same Times/Siena coverage said Trump’s “grip on the Republican Party remains indisputable,” even as a sizable share wanted a different kind of nominee next time. (nytimes.com) That means the poll points to internal strain, but not to Trump losing control of the party’s core voters. ### Where is the softening inside the coalition? Republican-leaning independents were the clearest source of movement in the Times/Siena findings. (newsmax.com) That group favored a new direction by 55% to 40%, according to reports on the poll. Younger GOP-aligned voters also stood out. Sixty percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents ages 18 to 44 said the next nominee should not follow Trump’s lead, according to the poll coverage. (nytimes.com) ### Is this mainly about the economy? AP-NORC released separate polling on May 20 showing Trump’s economic standing has weakened, including inside his own party. (newsmax.com) The survey found 63% of Republicans approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 78% at the start of his second term. That AP-NORC poll also found Trump’s overall job approval at 37% and said it interviewed 1,117 adults from May 14 to May 18, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. (newsbreak.com) Ipsos said in a May 11 Reuters/Ipsos poll that 64% of Americans reported recent gas-price increases had affected their household finances, and 83% expected gas prices to keep rising in the next month. Those figures help explain why social posts paired the GOP-direction poll with gas-price charts, though they came from different datasets. (apnorc.org) ### What do the RealClearPolling charts add? RealClearPolling’s national averages show Trump underwater overall, with its homepage on May 20 listing his job approval at 39.9% and disapproval at 57.3%. (apnorc.org) The same page showed the country’s direction at 33.8% right direction and 60.8% wrong track. Those averages are useful as a running benchmark, but they are not the source of the “one-third want a new direction” claim. That claim came from the New York Times/Siena poll released May 19. (ipsos.com) ### What should readers watch next? The next useful data points are likely to be new national Republican-primary and approval surveys over the next several weeks, especially any that break out Republican-leaning independents and younger voters. (realclearpolling.com) RealClearPolling’s latest-polls pages and the original pollsters’ releases are the clearest places to track whether the 37% figure holds, rises or falls. (realclearpolling.com) (nytimes.com)