As Election Day Nears, Republicans Come Around to Trump
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In this unconventional year, at least one conventional thing is occurring: Traditional Republican support is coalescing around the GOP nominee, Donald Trump.
This wasn’t a foregone conclusion during the summer, when the party’s establishment was openly expressing doubts about Mr. Trump, and when some conservatives and elected Republicans chose to stay away from the party’s convention.
But some of those leaders now are coming around, and, perhaps more important for the nominee, so are many traditional Republican voters. The signs of this movement can be seen in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
In that survey, 85% of Republicans said they’d support Mr. Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, in a head-to-head matchup against Democrats Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. That’s up from 81% a month earlier.
Significantly, the current level of partisan support is nearly identical to the 86% of Democrats who back Mrs. Clinton.
Similarly, in the bloc of states that traditionally vote Republican in a presidential race—the so-called red states—Mr. Trump leads Mrs. Clinton by a net of 14 percentage points. That is close to the net 16-point advantage Mr. Romney enjoyed over President Barack Obama in those states four years ago.
Mr. Trump hasn’t made up ground similarly among self-described conservatives; Mr. Romney enjoyed a bigger advantage on Election Day than Mr. Trump does now.
Yet there appears to be movement toward Mr. Trump among one group of once-skeptical conservatives: those in the tea-party movement. The Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, the super PAC associated with the largest tea-party organization, announced on Thursday that it is endorsing Mr. Trump.
The tea-party group’s explanation suggested it made the move as much to oppose Mrs. Clinton as to back Mr. Trump. “Hillary Clinton stands opposed to everything the Tea Party stands for, on the policy, political, and personal fronts,” Jenny Beth Martin, the group’s leader, said in a statement. “Donald Trump, on the other hand, has pledged to fight to uphold our core values. In making a choice between the two of them, there is really no choice at all – we choose Trump.”
In addition, two big Republican donors–casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and TD Ameritrade Corp. founder Joe Ricketts—this week got off the sidelines and said they’ll contribute to a super PAC backing Mr. Trump. Mr. Adelson had withheld support, and Mr. Ricketts once was an open Trump foe.
And he will need to go beyond core Republican support to win. He would have to either ramp up the backing he is getting from core groups such as working-class whites, or build up the narrow advantage he now enjoys among independent voters.
Still, the current picture shows a stronger core of party support than some expected Mr. Trump to win.
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