More Than Half of Republicans Think Trump Is a Better President Than Lincoln: Poll
The results of a political survey by The Economist and YouGov released this week include one telling indicator of the current state of the Republican electorate.
According to one poll that asked whether Donald Trump or Abraham Lincoln was “better,” 53 percent of Republicans chose Trump. More than 400 Republicans answered this question.
Overall, every three out of four respondents picked Lincoln over the current commander-in-chief. 78 percent of independent voters also sided with Lincoln.
— William Vaillancourt (@12WCV) November 30, 2019
The poll, conducted between Nov. 24-26 with 1,500 adult participants, found that just over a quarter of Republicans felt their party’s ideology is “not conservative enough.” Only 31 percent of Republicans, meanwhile, said they agreed with the U.S. intelligence community’s finding that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election.
“Great president,” Trump said about Lincoln in a March 2017 fundraising dinner for House Republicans. “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican. Right? Does anyone know? A lot of people don’t know that. We have to build that up a little more.”
Trump’s political affiliation has shifted over the years between Republican and Democrat, with a short-lived stint in the Reform Party around 2000. He has called himself a Republican since 2012. The only Republican in the survey to be favored over Trump in a head-to-head matchup was Ronald Reagan.
Nearly nine out of ten Republicans approve of how Trump is handling his job as president, the survey found. A Monmouth University poll from earlier this month found that 62 percent of people who approve of the president’s job performance say there is nothing he could do that would make them change their minds.
