Donald Trump is losing his base support, new poll finds

Trump has faced backlash for praising Rodrigo Duterte and Xi Jinping: AP
Trump has faced backlash for praising Rodrigo Duterte and Xi Jinping: AP

Donald Trump is losing grip of his party’s support as he returns from his first Presidential tour of Asia, a new poll has found.

The latest survey from Lucid found that 71.85 per cent of Republicans approve of Mr Trump as President, a drop of more than 3 per cent from the previous week at 75.21 per cent.

The same survey found the President’s approval rating to be just 35 per cent.

The results come after GOP lawmakers, including Arizona Senator Jeff Flake and Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, criticised Mr Trump. Both Senators plan to retire after their terms end. Mr Flake said Mr Trump’s actions were “dangerous to our democracy”. The new numbers also come as more evidence of links between the Trump campaign and Russia come to light.

The President, upon returning from his 12-day trip in Asia, said his travels were a “tremendous success”, even if it has done little to improve his popularity.

When leaving the Philippines, he said, “Tell Rodrigo [Duterte] I like him very much. He’s a good guy. I had a great time here.”

Almost 4,000 people have died as a result of the Mr Duterte's brutal crackdown on drugs.

Mr Trump also praised Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese communist leader in decades, as a “very special man”.

FiveThirtyEight’s latest average disapproval rating for Mr Trump – which weights a number of public polls, adjusted for survey quality, date, sample size and party bias – came out at 55.5 per cent.

Despite the slip of support in the Lucid survey, other polls find the President has a solid support base.

The latest poll from Survey Monkey found that Mr Trump has 85 per cent support from Republicans, the same result as the week before, and his approval rating was slightly higher than other surveys at 41 per cent.

Another poll from Morning Consult/Politico earlier this month revealed that 82 per cent of Trump voters would pick the former reality television star in 2020, while only 8 per cent of his voters would defect to a Democratic candidate at the next election.