GOP nominee Donald Trump cannot win the support of a quarter of top elected Republicans, a USA Today survey shows.
Out of 331 Republican governors and members of Congress, 87 are not endorsing Trump's candidacy as of Tuesday.
According to USA Today, some of those officials opposed Trump for months, but many rejected him after the release on Friday of video of Trump making lewd comments about women in 2005.
In 2012, Republican candidate Mitt Romney received the support of all but "a handful of Republican lawmakers," according to The Hill, who specify former Reps. Ron Paul and Walter Jones, and current Rep. Justin Amash as "the main holdouts."
In February Sen. Ben Sasse became the first Republican senator to declare he would not vote for Trump.
"If Donald Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option," Sasse said in a Facebook post.
Trump's "offensive comments make it very difficult for any candidate to support him," Fred Malek, longtime Republican strategist and the Republican Governors Association's finance chair, told USA Today.
"Therefore you have an unheard of number looking to their own election prospects and feeling they are better served by not supporting him."
Trump may be succeeding in getting his party's officials behind him, according to The Washington Post, who report that "some Republicans who called on him to drop out over the weekend are reversing themselves," such as Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, who on Saturday tweeted her hope that Trump would quit the race and let his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence, take over.
"He decided he would not step aside. I respect his decision," Fischer told Lincoln-based radio station KLIN on Tuesday, according to Politico. "I support the Republican ticket, and it's a Trump-Pence ticket. … To me, it's not a tough choice."
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