The Daily Mail reports the same voters who opted to return an unrepentant election denier to office are now prepared to oppose him if he tries the same scheme again in 2026.
A Daily Mail/YouGov survey conducted in October reveals 52-percent of respondents said Trump would not accept the results in November if voters give him the brutal rejection that analysts are predicting, compared to just 23 percent who believed he would.
“The findings revive questions about Trump’s willingness to accept an electoral defeat following his refusal to concede the 2020 presidential election to former President Joe Biden and his efforts to overturn the results,” reports Daily Mail.
But the survey also found that Americans prodigiously believe Trump should accept the results if his party loses Congress. Some 74 percent said he should accept the outcome — including 72 percent of Republicans.
Republicans’ overwhelming opposition to Trump taking an extra bite from the election-rigging apple appears to be in tandem with their staunch belief that Trump is also doing lasting damage to the party’s brand — which runs counter to the president’s campaign message this fall.
“Trump has made it clear he wants voters to treat November’s election as a verdict on his presidency, repeatedly urging crowds to ‘pretend’ he is on the ballot and warning that Republicans must turn out in force to hold Congress,” reports Daily Mail, “[but] the survey suggests that strategy could backfire.”
Nearly half of respondents, 49 percent, said Trump was hurting the GOP’s chances of retaining control of Congress, compared with just 20 percent who said he was helping, a 29-point gap. And even though it wasn’t the party they were voting for, 84 percent of respondents who planned to vote for a Democratic House candidate said Trump was hurting Republicans.
And that widely expected defeat will have everything to do with Trump, and little else, according to survey responses. When asked who would be most responsible for a Republican defeat, 40 percent of YouGov respondents named Trump. And economic anxiety was the most rousing factor fueling that belief.
President Donald Trump repeatedly refers to the economy as a “golden age” under his administration, but 39 percent of respondents expected to be financially worse off if the GOP retained control of Congress, compared with 23 percent who thought they would be better off.
In addition to rising fuel and food prices taking bigger bites out of Americans’ monthly paychecks, even the stock market is catching on to the welling problem with Trump-inspired national debt.
“Five years ago borrowing costs were so low that public debt looked almost costless,” wrote The Economist. “Today, with investors dumping their bonds, many big rich-world governments pay more to borrow than at any time since the 1990s or 2000s. Because the public debts of big advanced economies are about double, relative to GDP, what they were at the turn of the century, the result is immense pressure on budgets.”