Republicans Express Early Skepticism about Trump Reelection

TEHRAN (defapress)- Less than half of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters said intend to back President Donald Trump in the state’s 2020 primary, according to a new poll by University of New Hampshire.

News ID: 66558

Date: 19 October 2017 - 20:00

Forty-seven percent of likely Republican primary voters say they will vote for Trump in the next presidential primary, a significantly lower percentage than the 64 percent of likely Democratic primary voters who said in October 2009 they would vote for then-President Barack Obama in 2016. Nearly a quarter of likely GOP primary voters say they will vote for another candidate in 2020, and 30 percent say they are unsure, Politico reported.

Just 5 percent of likely Democratic voters in New Hampshire said around this time eight years ago that they would vote for a candidate other than Obama, and 30 percent had also said they were unsure at the time.

Trump won New Hampshire’s primary last year with 35 percent of the Republican vote (Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who finished second, had 16 percent of the vote) but narrowly lost the state and its four electoral votes in the general election by less than half a percentage point.

Despite historically low poll numbers, Trump has remained bullish on his reelection prospects. He encouraged a 2016 rematch with Hillary Clinton, tweeting "I hope” she runs in 2020, though the former secretary of state told BBC Radio on Tuesday that she will not run again.

Ninety-four percent of likely Democratic primary voters do not know who they will vote for in 2020. Two percent say they have decided who they will support already, and 4 percent are leaning toward someone.

Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who challenged Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2016, is the favorite to win New Hampshire’s Democratic primary, with 31 percent support.

Trailing Sanders is former Vice President Joe Biden with 24 percent support, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren with 13 percent support and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker with 6 percent support. Eleven percent of those surveyed say they are undecided.

The survey of 573 New Hampshire adults was conducted Oct. 3-15 via landline and cellphone. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.