President Donald Trump's support among those who backed him in last year's election after voting for Barack Obama in 2012 is significantly lower than among all those who voted for Trump, according to a new study released Wednesday by the bipartisan Democracy Fund Voter Study.
The organization has been conducting particularly in-depths studies by polling the same voters repeatedly for the past six years. This latest survey of 5,000 Americans was conducted in July of this year.
Trump's approval rating remains high at 88 percent among all those who voted for him, but among those who supported Obama in 2012, but switched to Trump in 2016, the approval rating is significantly lower at 70 percent.
Other revelations in the survey include:
- Twenty-two percent of the Obama-Trump voters disapproved of the job the president is doing, which is more than twice the 9 percent of all Trump voters who disapproved.
- Sixteen percent of these Obama-Trump voters said they regretted their choice in last year's election, significantly higher that the 6 percent of all Trump voters who regret voting for him.
- Trump's overall approval rating in the poll was 42 percent, with 54 percent disapproving.
Robert Griffin, director of quantitative analysis at the liberal Center for American Progress and part of the bipartisan study group, told Politico that Obama-Trump voters are "showing the highest amounts of regret in their vote of any group that we examined."
He stressed that "There's just a higher amount of uncertainty in Trump's coalition. This was probably something like 9 percent of the people who voted for him. They're highly uncertain about what they're going to do in this upcoming election."
Griffin cautioned, however, that "We're still a year [away from midterm elections.] Lots of people can change their minds. Lots of people can come home to their party. This is just a snapshot of where things are now, not a prediction of where they will be."