Former President Donald Trump does not just lead the Republican Party still, he ostensibly owns it, according to the latest Suffolk University-USA Today poll released Sunday.
By a near 2-to-1 margin, Republicans would leave the GOP to follow former President Donald Trump to a third party.
"We feel like Republicans don't fight enough for us, and we all see Donald Trump fighting for us as hard as he can, every single day," Brandon Keidl, 27, Republican small-business owner from Milwaukee told USA Today after being polled. "But then you have establishment Republicans who just agree with establishment Democrats and everything, and they don't ever push back."
The poll found 46% of Republicans would follow Trump to a new party, compared to just 26% that would stay with the GOP and remainder undecided. A majority of Trump voters (54%) are more loyal to the candidate than the party (34%).
Just 19% believed Republicans should turn away from Trump and remain loyal to establishment Republicans.
There is also "a seismic shift in the landscape of trusted news sources for conservatives in the country," according to Suffolk University Political Research Center Director David Paleologos.
Fox News had polled at 58% of their most trusted news source in October 2016, but that figure dropped to just 34%. Newsmax is now most trusted by 17%, followed by American News (OANN) at 9%.
The Suffolk-USA Today poll surveyed 1,000 Trump voters last Monday through Friday with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.