1 in 5 Republicans wants Donald Trump to exit the race

1 in 5 Republicans want Donald Trump to exit the race

(Image credit: Sara D. Davis/Getty Images)

The good news for Donald Trump in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday is that 70 percent of registered Republicans want him to stay in the race as the GOP nominee. On the other hand, 19 percent of Republicans want him to drop out and 10 percent "don't know." The numbers got worse when Reuters looked at all registered voters: Forty-four percent say they favor Trump exiting the race, which, Reuters notes, is "9 points higher than his support for the presidency in the latest Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll registered on Monday." In Tuesday's tracking poll, Hillary Clinton led Trump by 7 percentage points.

A big part of Trump's poll erosion is from Republican women in particular, The New York Times notes, pointing among other numbers to a 13 point drop among female GOP voters since the conventions. In late July, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that 72 percent of GOP women said they would vote for Trump, versus the 93 percent who backed Mitt Romney in 2012 and George W. Bush in 2004, or the 89 percent who voted for John McCain in 2008. Debbie Walsh, director of the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics, tells The Times that Trump has ramped up his pugnacious and "inflammatory" rhetoric since securing the nomination, "and I think we are seeing that women in particular have a real problem with it." The Reuters poll was conducted Aug. 5-8, with a confidence interval of 6 points for the GOP numbers and 3 points for all voters.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.