The majority of Trump supporters want the former president to take the debate stage next month.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump want to see him fend off his GOP challengers like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis after Trump opted to skip the first Republican primary debate.
A new Economist/YouGov poll released Wednesday found that 54 percent of Republican voters who want Trump to win the party nomination think Trump should participate in the second debate next month. Only 19 percent of Trump supporters think he shouldn’t.
The former president drew intense speculations about whether or not he’d attend last week’s event in Milwaukee in the weeks leading up to the first GOP debate and was goaded to take the stage by rivals who portrayed him as weak and afraid. In a controversial move, Trump decided to do a sit-down interview with former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that was aired at the same time that the debate was aired on Fox News.
The poll, conducted between August 26 and 29, shows that while most Republicans—61 percent of all GOP voters and 83 percent of Trump supporters—approved of Trump’s decision not to participate in the debate, most Republicans also think he should be on stage the second time around.
