Poll: GOP Voters Prefer the Republican Party to Be ‘More Like’ Trump than ‘More Like’ Pence

GOP voters prefer the Republican Party to be “more like” former President Trump than “more like” former Vice President Mike Pence, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Wednesday found.

The survey asked respondents, “Should the Republican Party be more like former President Donald Trump or more like Mike Pence?”

A plurality of likely voters, 40 percent, said “more like Donald Trump,” compared to 38 percent who said “more like Mike Pence” and 22 percent who remain unsure. However, a majority of Republicans, specifically, believe the party should be more like the former president, 64 percent to the 24 percent who chose Pence. Even a plurality of independent voters said the Republican Party should be more like Trump than Pence, 39 percent to 36 percent.

Notably, 53 percent of Democrats believe the party should be more like Pence.

Overall, voters have a favorable impression of the former vice president, with 49 percent viewing him as at least “somewhat” favorable:

Pence’s favorability rating among all voters has increased slightly since May 2018, when 46% viewed him favorably, but his popularity among GOP voters has declined. Three years ago, 74% of GOP voters had a favorable impression of Pence, including 54% who had a Very Favorable view of him.

The survey, taken among 930 U.S. likely voters from June 6-7, 2021, has a margin of error of +/- 3 percent.

Both Trump and Pence have emerged into the public eye in recent days. Last week, Pence delivered a speech at Hillsborough County GOP’s annual Lincoln-Reagan Awards Dinner in New Hampshire, using it to blast the policies of President Biden, who branded himself as more of a “moderate” candidate during the presidential election.

“In 2020, you remember Joe Biden was campaigning as a moderate when he campaigned, but he’s literally governed as the most liberal president since FDR,” Pence said.

Similarly, former President Trump delivered a speech at the North Carolina Republican Party convention Saturday, endorsing Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) for U.S. Senate and blasting the far-left for attempting to “indoctrinate America’s schoolchildren with poisonous and divisive left-wing doctrine” via Critical Race Theory.

“Republicans at every level should move to immediately ban critical race theory in schools, and we should ban it in workplaces, we should ban it in our states, and we should ban in the federal government,” Trump said. “And it should be done immediately.”