Poll: Half of GOP Voters Think Party Leaders Aren't Conservative Enough

Half of Republican voters think GOP leaders aren’t conservative enough, a new poll released Thursday shows.

In a Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey, 28% of likely GOP voters think Republican voters’ attitudes remain about the same as those of party leaders, while 50% believe GOP voters are getting more conservative than their leadership.

In contrast, 35% of likely Democrat voters continue to share attitudes that are about the same as the party’s leadership, 43% say Democrat voters are becoming more liberal than their leaders and 17% believe these voters are getting more conservative.

According to the pollster, the views of  Democrat voters about their party leadership haven’t changed much from June 2020 — but the percentage of GOP voters who say they’re more conservative than party leaders has jumped 14 points in a year.

In other findings, the poll found that among all likely voters:

• 43% think Republican voters are becoming more conservative than their party’s leadership, 18% say they are becoming more liberal and 27% feel their attitudes are about the same.
• 47% of all voters believe Democrat voters are turning more liberal than their leaders, 15% think they are becoming more conservative, while 31% see their views staying about the same.
• 45% of self-designated liberal voters believe the attitudes of Democrat voters remain about the same as the leadership’s, 43% say Democrat voters are becoming more liberal, 6% see them becoming more conservative.
• 27% of conservatives think most GOP voters share the same views as the party’s leadership, 50% say those voters are becoming more conservative, and 18% of conservatives feel Republican voters are turning more liberal than their leaders.

The survey of 1,000 likely voters has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.