Donald Trump Has Remade the GOP in His Own Image. He’s Not Going Anywhere.
Recent polls show Republican voters now reject many of the old GOP shibboleths that Donald Trump trashed — and that they continue to rally around their new leader, indictments and all. Joe Biden can’t just base his campaign on being “not Trump.”

Donald Trump at the first tee during the final round of LIV Golf Bedminster on August 13, 2023 at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. (Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
Despite being under indictment now in four separate criminal cases, Donald Trump remains far and away the most popular politician among Republican voters. He has consistently maintained a lead of almost 40 percentage points over second-place Ron DeSantis in presidential primary polls, even as more criminal charges against him were announced over the summer.
But Nate Cohn’s recent poll analysis in the New York Times provides two interesting new wrinkles. First, Republican support has plummeted for socially conservative measures like banning gay marriage, for cutting entitlement spending, and for an “active” foreign and military policy. Cohn characterizes these as the three “legs” holding up the Republican coalition since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and all three policies had strong support among Republican voters during George W. Bush’s presidency. Trump either claims he opposes these three stances or is indifferent to them, and today more than two-thirds of Republican voters align with him on this.
Second, a large number of Republican voters who don’t agree with Trump on many of his core issues still support him. A New York Times/Sienna College poll from late July asked Republicans about Trump’s positions on trade, immigration, an “isolationist” foreign policy, and entitlement spending (unlike most Republicans, Trump has been a defender of Social Security, at least rhetorically). Among Republican voters who agreed with Trump on none of the four issues, 30 percent still supported him. Among those who agreed with him on only one issue, 40 percent supported him, and a majority who agreed with him on two or more issues supported him.