Rasmussen: 62% of Likely Voters Say Donald Trump Has Changed the Republican Party

A Rasmussen Reports survey released Friday found 62 percent of likely voters believe President Donald Trump has changed the direction of the Republican Party.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters, conducted September 23-24, finds just 24 percent believe political newcomer Trump has turned into a traditional Washington Republican.

Republicans appear to be less convinced than other voters that Trump has changed the direction of their party.

Among Republican voters, 53 percent said Trump has changed the GOP to his own way of thinking, while 66 percent of Democrats and 69 percent of unaffiliated voters expressed the same sentiment.

During her address in August to the Republican National Convention, businesswoman and adviser to the president Ivanka Trump said about her father, “For the first time in a long time, we have a president who has called out Washington’s hypocrisy.”

“[Y]ou don’t achieve different results by doing things the same way,” she continued. “Washington has not changed Donald Trump; Donald Trump has changed Washington.”

According to the survey, 65 percent of Democrats value how much government experience a political candidate has, while 62 percent of Republicans say private sector experience is more important.

Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s 45 years in elected office are viewed positively by 42 percent of likely voters. The poll finds 38 percent view Biden’s political experience as a negative, while 19 percent say it has no impact on their vote.

Among Democrats, 65 percent view Biden’s political experience positively, while only 20 percent of Republicans and 38 percent of unaffiliated voters agree.

Rasmussen Reports commented on how voters’ age and race might affect their attitudes about a candidate’s political experience.

“The older the voter, the more importance they place on a candidate’s experience in government,” the pollster wrote. “Blacks put a lot more emphasis on that experience than whites and other minority voters do.”

The margin of sampling error of the survey is plus or minus three points, with a 95% level of confidence.