Hello and welcome to DEEPER LOOK coming to you once again from Washington.

I'm Del Irani. It's great to have your company.

Despite facing legal troubles, former President Donald Trump's grip on the Republican Party remains strong.

And he's the front runner who's likely to win the Republican nomination.

So how is Mr. Trump attracting supporters and changing the Republican Party?

And what implications does this have for the future of US politics?

Well, joining us today is Whit Ayres of North Star Opinion Research.

He is a leading Republican political consultant and pollster with over 30 years of experience

in polling and survey research for high profile political campaigns.

Whit Ayres, welcome to the program.

My pleasure, glad to be with you.

You recently said that if the election was going to be held today,

former President Donald Trump would win the election.

Why do you say that?

Joe Biden is the weakest incumbent president in America since Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980.

The job approval ratings of both Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden are very similar.

They've gotten nothing but down.

A big problem is Joe Biden's age.

A recent poll showed that 86% of Americans think he's too old to serve effectively in a second term.

86% of Americans don't agree on anything,

except the fact that Joe Biden is too old to serve in a second term.

So consequently, Donald Trump is ahead of Joe Biden in all the swing states,

and he would win a landslide if the election were held today.

Age is a factor for both the candidates,

their unpopularity as a candidate for both of them as well.

But Donald Trump does have something that makes Republican voters very beholden to him.

I mean, what is it about Mr. Trump?

Donald Trump has persuaded a great many Americans, that he looks out for them,

that he has their back, that he will fight for them against the forces that they think are arrayed against them.

A lot of manufacturing jobs in America have been shipped overseas.

A great many people in this country have suffered from an opioid crisis,

with overdoses of opioids, which have destroyed a lot of lives.

I did a focus group of blue-collar men, shortly after the 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And I was asking them this very same question.

And they looked at me and said, you know, we look out and all of our jobs have gone overseas.

Our families are being ripped apart by the opioid crisis.

We have rampant drug use, divorces, problems with kids.

And our choices were between a guy who'd help us Donald Trump,

and a woman, Hillary Clinton, who called us deplorable.

What did you expect us to do?

And that gave me a real insight into the perspective of these people.

They said, listen, understand, Donald Trump's kind of a bear to work for.

But we've got one guy who said he'd help us and another person who said we're deplorable,

and we went with the guy who said he'd help us.

Do you think that a lot of these voters would still feel this way about him today?

If you were to do that focus group now, would they say the same thing about Donald Trump?

Yes, they would say the same thing about Donald Trump today,

which is why his support has been so stable.

Now, he's never had majority support in the entire country.

He's never had majority job approval when he was president.

He got 48% in 2016, 48% in 2020, he's never had a majority of the country vote for him.

But he's got a very committed corps of supporters.

About a third of Republican voters are always Trump voters.

They will walk through a wall of flame, crawl over broken glass to go vote for him.

And will this base still support him even if he's convicted in any of the trials?

If you look at the people who currently support Donald Trump,

over 90% of them say they would still support him, if he were convicted of a felony.

Donald Trump has persuaded his supporters that these legal cases are a partisan witch hunt,

that they're driven by Democratic prosecutors who are trying to get him

because he's the leading candidate against Joe Biden.

And his supporters believe that.

Is there any one case that is the most incriminating that could potentially sway voters,

people within the Republican Party that are perhaps not Trump loyalists,

and maybe somewhat more moderate? Would they be swayed at all?

The two trials that are the most serious are those that are brought by Jack Smith, the special prosecutor.

The January 6 trial about trying to overturn the election will occur,

when it occurs, we don't know yet, in Washington, DC.

The other serious one is the classified documents trial that may occur in Florida.

Again, we don't know when.

If he is convicted in either one of those,

then I think it will make it more difficult for the soft Republicans,

the ones who voted for Trump twice, but are a little reluctant now to go his direction.

They may not vote at all.

But I don't know that it's a sure thing that they go and vote for Joe Biden, because he's so unpopular.

Is former President Donald Trump, a worse or better candidate today than he was in 2020?

He is a better candidate today,

in part because he has a much more professional political team around him.

He has two real professionals running his campaign.

They're very disciplined.

They're very diligent, and in 2016, and even in 2020, it was kind of a circus in his campaign.

But it's a very disciplined campaign now.

That's far better than it was in either the two previous runs for office.

Why do you think that Donald Trump has been able to maintain so much influence

over the Republican Party and how is he trying to change the party?

He is a very, very strong personality.

He is very vindictive; he goes after anyone who criticizes him.

He goes after anyone who votes against him in Congress.

And he's frequently been successful at running them out of the party.

Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Congresswoman, congressmen who joined the January 6 panel

to try to investigate what happened that day had been run out of the party.

So, let me ask you, what does it mean if he wins?

If he wins, what does it mean for the future of the Republican Party?

And what does it mean if he loses?

If he wins it means he has four more years

to put a very, very thorough stamp on the Republican Party as Donald Trump's party.

It's already pretty much Donald Trump's party.

- Feels like that from the outside because every other contender has been, you know, pushed out.
- Exactly.

On the other hand, if Donald Trump loses the election,

it will be the fifth national election in a row that Republicans have lost because of him.

They lost in 2018, they lost in 2020.

They lost in 2021 in Georgia.

They lost two Senate seats and control of the Senate.

They lost in 2022.

So, if he loses in 2024, that will be five in a row.

And that will probably be the end of Donald Trump as a national force.

Although it will not be the end of Donald Trump as a Republican force within what remains of the Republican Party.

So, just put it all in context for us.

I mean, the impact that Donald Trump is having and how the Republican Party is changing.

The Republican Party has become a much more blue-collar party,

with a great many of the blue-collar workers who feel like the economy has not worked for them in his orbit now.

Donald Trump is a very strong personality,

who has persuaded a great many Republicans who feel like they're losing their culture,

that he is their defender.

These are people who feel like immigrants are coming in, in an uncontrolled way,

and destroying American culture.

There are people who believe that the coastal elites have so many of the benefits,

and the coastal elites look down on the people in the middle of the country.

And it makes them very anti-establishment.

It makes it very anti-Washington, and infuses their views with a passion,

and an intensity that worked to Donald Trump's advantage.

How did we get here?

I mean, how did America, one of the world's leading superpowers,

a great democracy end up with two presidential candidates,

which a large majority of Americans, you know, don't really like and find are too old.

Isn't that a great question?

- You have the answer for it?
- Americans wonder exactly that question.

Part of it is the polarization of the country, where Democrats and Republicans live in different worlds.

They listen to different media; they think different issues are important.

And they tend to support people in their particular view,

who will reflect their perspective and their outlook on the world.

So, you end up with Republicans playing to their most conservative base,

and Democrats playing to their most liberal base, and leaving the people in the middle out.

A majority of Americans are not on the extremes - left or right.

And yet, the dynamic of our two-party system promotes people who are more extreme on both sides.

And it leaves out the people in the middle.

And it produces two candidates that the people in the middle don't want.

It's frustrating, because it doesn't do a lot for the credibility of the American political system

if it offers up to candidates that 60% of Americans don't want.

How divided is America right now?

Very, very, and may become more so.

If Donald Trump wins, it is going to be incredibly divisive.

There will be millions of immigrants who feel like

he's going to come after them to throw them out of the country.

There will be millions of more liberal people who feel like he is going

to try to squash them and their ability to speak freely.

If he loses, he will claim that the election is stolen, again.

And 60% of Republicans think the election was stolen in 2020.

So, you will have a great many Republicans,

millions of Republicans who have lost faith in our electoral process,

and they will not believe the outcome of any election.

So, it is going to be very divisive if either Donald Trump wins or loses.

What does this mean for the state and the future of US democracy?

It means that the future of US democracy is in a more tenuous position

than it's been since my decades in this business.

The American democracy is facing a crisis.

I hope it comes through it okay.

But there are real challenges ahead.

Donald Trump has done a very good job of destroying faith in the American electoral system.

He's done a pretty good job of destroying faith in the American law enforcement agencies.

And now he's going to be on a mission to destroy faith in the American judicial process,

if indeed, he gets convicted on any of these trials.

So, he has done a number on the Americans' faith in their basic institutions.

And it's going to take a long time to recover that.

What, if anything, can the Republican Party do to change this dynamic?

And what does it mean for the future of US politics?

It's hard to know what the Republican Party can do without knowing the outcome of the election.

That's why I said it's so critical, not just for the future of the Republican Party,

but the future of the country.

And there is so much riding on this election.

I can't help but think, given the unpopularity of both the major figures,

given the challenges that they have coming up, with trials and with age,

I can't help but think that this election may be decided by events that haven't happened yet.

We don't know what could happen between now and November.

But it feels unstable.

Yes, we're very likely to get Joe Biden versus Donald Trump.

But we need to at least hold in the back of our minds the possibility

that something could happen to shake that up between now and November.

Thank you so much for your time and insights. We really appreciate you.

- My pleasure. Happy to do it.
- Thank you.

It's clear that the future of the Republican Party hangs in the balance

awaiting the outcome of the 2024 US presidential election.

Whether Donald Trump secures a victory or a loss,

the ramifications could possibly shape the Republican Party and the future of US politics.

I'm Del Irani. Thanks for your company.

I'll see you next time on DEEPER LOOK.