Donald Trump may be the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, but approval for the political party struggling to rally behind him is now at its lowest since 2009.
Sixty-two percent of people polled in the Bloomberg Politics National Poll had an unfavorable view of the Republican Party, its highest unfavorable rating since the poll began in 2009. Excluding this election cycle, the largest percent of potential voters who saw the Republican party as unfavorable was 56% in Sept. 2013. In contrast, 46% of people polled said that thought the Democratic Party is favorable in the June survey.
“This is obviously related to perceptions of Trump,” said J. Ann Selzer, the president of Selzer and Co. who oversaw the survey to Bloomberg. “This bleeds out into perceptions of the party and to other GOP politicians.”
Trump, who has been a polarizing figure largely due to his controversial remarks on women, Islam, Mexican immigrants and more, lost to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the same poll by a considerable margin. While 49% of likely voters out of a pool of roughly 750 said they would back Clinton, just 39% said they would back Trump.
While nearly one in three Republicans say they felt unfavorably toward Trump, 17% of Democrats said they felt the same about Clinton.
But the majority of likely Republican voters however, say nominating Trump would be good for the party—69%.
It’s an interesting statistic during an election cycle when the Republican party itself has been split over Trump’s rise. In recent years, the GOP has been trying to gather supporters in the Hispanic community, though Trump’s incendiary rhetoric surrounding immigration and Mexico has made that road more difficult.
When asked who would be Trump’s best vice-presidential running mate, most Trump supporters, 29%, pointed to Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
