The short happy (political) life of Donald Trump
Remember when I told you not to worry about Donald Trump? From Public Policy Polling, a new survey of GOP voters with a simple title: “Trump collapses.”
Donald Trump has had one of the quickest rises and falls in the history of Presidential politics. Last month we found him leading the Republican field with 26 percent. In the space of just four weeks he’s dropped all the way down to 8 percent, putting him in a tie for fifth place with Ron Paul.
Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney are at the top of the GOP race with 19 percent and 18 percent respectively. Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are further back at 13 percent and 12 percent, followed by Trump and Paul at 8 percent, Michele Bachmann at 7 percent, and Tim Pawlenty at 5 percent.
As Trump got more and more exposure over the last month Republicans didn’t just decide they weren’t interested in having him as their nominee — they also decided they flat don’t like him. Only 34 percent of GOP voters now have a favorable opinion of Trump to 53 percent who view him in a negative light.
Trump really made hay out of the ‘birther’ issue and as the resonance of that has declined, so has his standing. In February we found that 51 percent of Republican primary voters thought Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Now with the release of his birth certificate only 34 percent of GOP partisans fall into that camp, and Trump’s only in fifth place with that now smaller group of the electorate at 9 percent.
The rest of the numbers for the rest of the candidates are still pretty unimportant at this stage of the race, nearly eight months out from the Iowa caucuses. But Trump did serve a useful purpose: He made it so fashionable to question the circumstances of President Obama’s birth that the president finally put the nonsense to rest (or, at least, he made it clear that nothing will convince the ones for whom it’s still an issue).
So, Donald: You’re …
Nah, I can’t say it.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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113 comments Add your comment
TRUTH
May 10th, 2011
7:59 pm
The GOP field is pretty weak, guys. Let’s just be honest. It’s like voting between a Yugo and a Gremlin (hose are old 70s cars for the uninformed). Think you GOP’ers need to go a rustle up good ol’ Sam Wurzelbacher (Joe the Plumber), at least he has more panache than the current zoo.
E
May 10th, 2011
8:04 pm
Actually, the Yugo is an 80s car.
/pedant
rwcole
May 10th, 2011
8:41 pm
In other words, over 34% of the Grand Ole Party refuse to accept reality. Great. Just great.
Lil' Barry Bailout
May 10th, 2011
8:54 pm
The good news for the GOP and Americans is that the GOP nominee to be named later is running against the Idiot Messiah.
independent thinker
May 10th, 2011
9:54 pm
Life is short in the GOP clown car-now Newt can be head clown with Herman Cain spinning pizzas.
Yugo
May 10th, 2011
9:59 pm
Look, I’ve taken a million insults, but comparing me to those Republican losers is a new low.
MikeB
May 11th, 2011
12:30 am
I would not vote for Trump, or Obama….. Both have ego’s that constantly need to be managed. At least Trump has run a business though (yes its inherited and yes he has had some difficulty over the years, but he has stayed the course and is financially successful at present).
What has President Obama done besides the Bin Laden hit? (was that Rahm “the Chicago thug” Emanual that pulled the trigger?)
Nuthin…… This next election will be about the economy. Not Bin Laden or the strange way we involved American resources in Libya while Obama was touring Chile…
mark971
May 11th, 2011
1:31 am
The question should be do the other canidates have the guts to stand up for the American people, or are they going to broker more deals behind closed doors? I feel as though America needs a canidate that won’t be afraid wheither it be Donald Trump or not. The other canidates I feel don’t posses this quality. Maybe a total jerk is what we need to wake us up, we are headed for even harder times as more and more Americans run out of unemployment. We chased all of our manufacturing jobs out of our country and we do not produce any major goods, but we sure know how to make seed only last for one crop. I am so glad my parents believed Ronald Reagan’s NAFTA plan. With the brainiacs on Wall Street not knowing how to add and subtract, oh sorry they are just great with numbers. We will have to raise taxes 65% on every American just to pay the interest payments, but lets not start to worry. What ever happened to Obama’s talking about putting money into our rail system( which we dismantled quite a bite), haven’t seen that one yet. We just need people who are going to stop with this moronic wasteful spending to make this country great again. We talk about peak oil but how much money have we spent on our decaying road system. I just thought with the two dollar toll per car would happen to fix a couple pot holes. Will the auto industry step up to give us a cheaper alternative to the combustion motor for our bail out money? I think the public needs to take a serious look at what is unfolding here and stop worrying about he said she said stuff.
Belle from South
May 11th, 2011
7:08 am
Why is it that we have such a “herd mentality” in this country that people have forgotten to think for themselves? When someone wants to be the leader of the greatest country in the world, he/she should have intelligence, education, bipartisanship, and be ready for just about anything that comes along. Obama went into office with black hair, grinning from ear to ear, expections abounding and ran into a brick wall called Washington politics. He now has graying hair, a solemn facial expression, and a desparate need to implement policies he thought would save our country. He walked into a mess! People, please do your research before we hire the next president and make sure he/she is not a joke ala Trump, Palin, etc.
a reader
May 11th, 2011
8:10 am
he’ll be back
marc
May 11th, 2011
9:37 am
Obama is unbeatable in2012……deal with it.
Get Real
May 11th, 2011
10:56 am
Obama is a class act for sure – attended Rev Wright’s church, made fun of Special Olympics, friends with Bill Ayers, Invited a Thug to Poem Night at the White House, took credit for a job done by the Seals and intellegence/interrogation procedures set up by Bush/Cheny, exempted Unions from Obamacare! I could write a book on his classless tactics. And I don’t have any prejudice because he’s half white and half black. Herman Cain would make 10 times the better president than Obama!
Can Newt win the nomination, beat Obama? | Kyle Wingfield
May 11th, 2011
11:30 am
[...] will surely soon rise above Donald Trump, who’s been running ahead of him for the past few weeks. Two of the others ahead of him on [...]