Nearly half of Republicans would drop out of the GOP and join the Trump party.

Nearly half of Republicans would not hesitate to quit the GOP and join a new party led by former President Donald Trump, according to a poll of Trump voters released by Suffolk University / USA Today on Sunday. The poll found that 46% said they would quit their party, while only 27% said they would not drop the GOP. The others are undecided. Half of Trump’s voters polled said the GOP should be “more loyal to Trump.” Only 19% said the opposite and think the Republican Party should be less loyal to Trump. “We feel like the Republicans aren’t fighting enough for us, and we all see Donald Trump fighting for us as hard as he can every day,” said a small business owner from Milwaukee.

The poll showed that Trump voters are much more loyal to the former president than to the Republican Party. While 54% of those polled said they were loyal to Trump, only 34% said they were loyal to the party. The numbers highlight the dilemma Republican leaders face as they try to adjust to a post-Trump world. Trump sharply criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who voted to acquit the former president in the impeachment trial, but then said the former president was “morally” responsible for the riot January 6 at the Capitol. “Mitch is an austere, sullen, smileless political hack, and if Republican senators want to stick with him, they won’t win anymore,” Trump said.

Those who opposed Trump on his second indictment risk facing backlash from voters, at least according to Sunday’s poll. Eight in 10 Trump voters say they would be less likely to vote for a Republican who supported the impeachment of the former president. The reason Republicans are so willing to punish anyone who voted to impeach Trump is at least in part because they continue to believe lies about what happened in the January 6 riot. Almost 60% of Trump voters say the riot was “primarily an anti-faa-inspired attack that only involved a few Trump supporters.” It’s no wonder, then, that fifty-nine percent of Trump’s voters want him to run for president again in 2024.

Trump will speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference next weekend where, among other things, he is expected to speak about the future of the Republican Party and the Conservative movement in general.