The results of this Bloomberg Politics poll doesn’t surprise me. Increasingly, we’re seeing that the Republican Party is not in sync with the general electorate — or the rest of the world — in its reactions to Trump’s comments about Muslims.

Almost two-thirds of likely 2016 Republican primary voters favor Donald Trump’s call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S., while more than a third say it makes them more likely to vote for him.

Which means his polls could go up.

Those are some of the findings from a Bloomberg Politics/Purple Strategies PulsePoll, an online survey conducted Tuesday, that shows support at 37 percent among all likely general-election voters for the controversial proposal put forward by the Republican front-runner.
“We believe these numbers are made up of some people who are truly expressing religious bigotry and others who are fearful about terrorism and are willing to do anything they think might make us safer,” Doug Usher, who runs polling for Washington-based Purple Strategies, said in his analysis of the findings. “This indicates that, despite some conventional wisdom expressed in the last 48 hours, this is unlikely to hurt Trump at least in the primary campaign.”

Support for Trump’s proposal remains virtually unchanged even after voters are told both sides of the argument. On one side, they were told that “leaders from across the political spectrum have condemned this policy” as one that will make the U.S. “less safe by alienating the allies we need to fight ISIS.” They were also told that Trump has said it is needed until more is known about the threat and that the nation “cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in jihad.”

When voters were provided with this additional information, support for the proposal remains essentially unchanged, with 64 percent of likely Republican primary voters saying they favor the idea. That includes 52 percent who say they strongly support the proposal.

After being told about the idea, 37 percent of likely Republican primary voters say it makes them more likely to support the billionaire real estate mogul, while 16 percent say less and 46 percent say it has no impact.

But this isn’t surprising. Polls had once found a chunk of GOPers didn’t believe Barack Obama wasn’t Muslim. As I’ve often said, fact’s don’t matter in our 21st century, tribalistic politics. What matters is when an assertion is repeated over and over and then to some it becomes a fact. It also matters if their favorite radio talk or cable host gives a controversial assertion a pass or seems to agree with it. It’s a form of saying, “Well, if my best (political) bud says it, then it must be true.” And a lowering of a political bar then sets the assertion that would have once been too extreme or outlandish as a t new normal. It then becomes the new accepted idea — even though 5 or 10 years ago some of these same folks would not support such an idea.

So this is a sign of Trump not just setting the political dialogue, but moving his party further to the right by advocating an idea that wasn’t on the table before and his now been given legitimacy by many. That used to be the role of the conservative political entertainment media compled. Conservative talk radio hosts didn’t reject Trump due to his idea of a Muslim ban. So, in effect, they have given him their blessing, which means their audiences will as well. And, voila! A new normal.

in a general election, however, this could be problematical for Trump and the GOP:

Among all likely general-election voters, including Democrats and independents, 18 percent say it makes them more likely to back Trump, while 33 percent say less likely and 44 percent say it has no impact.

While Trump has considerable strength among likely Republican primary voters, the survey shows weakness for him in a general election. Including all likely voters, 33 percent view him favorably and 64 percent unfavorably.
That’s a worse favorability rating than President Barack Obama, who was at 51 percent favorable and 47 percent unfavorable in this survey. It’s also worse than Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who is seen favorably by 45 percent and unfavorably by 52 percent of likely general-election voters.

SOME OTHER REACTION TO THIS POLL:
—Doug Mataconis:

Given these previous numbers, nobody should be surprised if polling shows that likely Republican voters support Donald Trump’s plan to bar Muslims from the country no matter how insane, bigoted, or demagogic it might sound to anyone with, well, even a modicum of common sense and decency.
At the same time, these numbers shouldn’t be taken as proof that all Republicans support Trump’s proposal or that they would support him if he ended up being the Republican nominee. For the most part, the Republicans and conservatives that I’ve come to know online and personally over the years have expressed nothing but disdain for Trump for months now, and they have been particularly disdainful of the border control “plan” he announced on Monday. To a person, they have nearly all said that they would not support Trump is he were to become the nominee, and there’s a general sense of bewilderment as to how someone like him could end up becoming such a strong force in the party they support.
Now, one could make an argument that Donald Trump as the Republican frontrunner is largely a case of the Republican Party’s chickens coming home to roost — and to a large degree that’s an argument that I agree with — but it’s also fairly apparent that these latest comments on his part are seeming to serve as something of a wake up call to a segment of the party that has unwisely let the Tea Party and the hard right take control of the GOP in recent years because it seemed like a smart way to win elections.
The problem they face now, of course, is that the inmates have arguably taken over the asylum and stopping Trump individually won’t necessarily wipe Trumpism out of the party. If these poll results are any indication, in fact, it’s arguably the case that Trump speaks for the GOP base far more than any of the other candidates in the race, and that’s a problem for an establishment that seems to finally recognize the monster they’ve helped create.

–-Digby:

Apparently, the only Republicans who oppose this must be office holders and media figures because that’s a very small number in opposition.

The “fearful about terrorism” is just crazy. We had an attack in which people hijacked passenger planes and flew them into buildings killing thousands of people 15 years ago. Nobody proposed anything like this. And, by the way, we haven’t had an attack even close to that scale since then.

Being fearful of lunatics with guns randomly shooting people completely rational. These things happen with terrifying frequency in our country. What isn’t rational is that these Trump people are only afraid of this when a Muslim is on the other side of the semi-automatic weapon. otherwise it’s just the price of freedom.

This is nuts. But then these Republican voters have been working themselves into a frenzy for quite some time. They’re more than ready for a man on a white horse.

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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