Poll: Majority of Republicans Want Donald Trump to Stay Active in Politics

A majority of Republicans want former President Donald Trump to remain active in politics, a CNBC survey released Friday revealed.

While the poll, taken February 2-7, prior to the formal start of Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial, showed that 54 percent of Americans want the former president “to remove himself from politics entirely,” Republicans do not feel the same way. Rather, nearly three-quarters of Republicans, 74 percent, want him to stay politically active. Opinions vary, however, concerning what that looks like.

Forty-eight percent of Republicans, for example, want him to remain the head of the party, followed by 12 percent who want him to stay active but in a different capacity than leading the party. Eleven percent want Trump to start a party outside of the Republican Party. Republican National Party (RNC) chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has dismissed the rumors of Trump considering a third party launch.

“I’ve talked to the president [Trump],” she told Fox News in January. “I’ve talked to others around the president, who are talking to him every day. He’s not going to start a third party.

Democrats overwhelmingly want Trump to entirely remove himself from the political arena, and 81 percent and 47 percent of independents hold the same sentiment.

Jay Campbell, a Democrat pollster, said the survey demonstrates Trump still enjoys strong support among the GOP base.

“If we’re talking about Donald Trump’s future, at the moment, the survey shows he still has this strong core support within his own party who really want him to continue to be their leader,” he said, according to CNBC.

The survey, taken among 1,000 Americans, has a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percent.

While Democrats hope to convict Trump and prevent him from running for office again, a conviction in the Senate impeachment trial remains unlikely as 44 GOP senators voted against proceeding, questioning the constitutionality of the trial. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has reportedly told GOP colleagues he intends to acquit the former president.