A new poll out today by Bloomberg Politics shows that 65% of likely Republican primary voters back Donald Trump’s proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.
Overall, 37% of Americans support the ban while 50% oppose it.
The online poll conducted on Wednesday also found that about 37 percent of those polled would be more likely to vote for the businessman after his call to temporarily halt Muslims from entering the United States until elected leaders can “figure out what’s going on.”
“We believe these numbers are made up of some people who are truly expressing religious bigotry and others who are fearful about terrorism and are willing to do anything they think might make us safer,” Doug Usher of Purple Strategies, said. “This indicates that, despite some conventional wisdom expressed in the last 48 hours, this is unlikely to hurt Trump at least in the primary campaign.”
Among likely Republican primary voters, Trump has a favorability rating a of 65 percent — 1 percentage point higher than rival Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and 4 percentage points higher than Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas). However, of the three GOP candidates whose favorability was measured in the poll, Trump has the highest unfavorable ratings, 33 percent compared to Rubio’s 22 percent and Cruz’s 26 percent.
Despite high support among Republicans for Trump’s proposal, only 18 percent of Democrats support his idea; overall, the poll found that only 37 percent support Trump’s ban while 50 percent oppose it. He also has a negative favorability of 64 percent.
The online poll surveyed 605 likely 2016 general election voters. The overall margin of error is 4 percentage points and the margin of error of likely GOP primary voters is 7 percentage points.
That 7% MOE number is very large, which calls the poll into question. But if you peruse a lot of online commenting sections as I do, you know that the 65% number is not far off base.
Trump has also expanded his lead in New Hampshire. Apparently, appealing to bigotry pays off handsomely in some corners of the Republican Party.
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