Former President Donald Trump continues to be on a roll with 2024 voters who appear eager for a return of MAGA.
Already buoyed by polls showing that a majority of voters are willing to overlook his legal troubles, Trump is steadily gaining on President Joe Biden in head-to-head matchups.
And now there’s a sign that voters are ready to forget traits they weren’t keen on while Trump was president.
In a word, they have a growing “respect” for the 45th president of the United States as a leader.
So says the latest Rasmussen Reports survey shared with Secrets that found likely voters respect Trump twice as much as they do Biden, 42% to 21%.
What’s more, voters respect Trump more than former President Barack Obama and the leading Republican and Democratic presidential challengers Trump and Biden have faced.
The question Rasmussen asked was: “Which one of the following people do you respect most as a leader: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney?”
The results:
— Trump 42%.
— Biden 21%.
— Obama 17%.
— Not sure 6%.
— Nikki Haley 5%.
— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) 5%.
— Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) 3%.
— Hillary Rodham Clinton 2%.
As always, partisanship played a huge role in the survey, with Republicans rallying behind Trump much more than Democrats did for Biden.
Some 75% of Republicans said they respected Trump most as a leader. Among Democrats, however, just 43% chose Biden.
Notably, just 1% of Democrats picked Clinton as the leader they most respect. Obama was second behind Biden among Democrats, at 30%.
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Rasmussen also found stronger support for Trump among older voters and less support for Biden among younger voters.
“Older voters show a stronger preference for Trump, compared to younger voters,” the survey analysis said. “However, voters under 40 are more likely to name Obama (24%) than Biden (16%) as the leader they respect the most. And it’s among under-40 voters that Sanders gets the highest level of respect.”