WASHINGTON—Last week, David Wright decided that his candidate was a “moron.”

Wright, an optical technician and “Reagan Republican” in Tennessee, had been willing to ignore a certain amount of foolishness from party nominee Donald Trump. But when Trump suggested that gun owners might assassinate Hillary Clinton, Wright came to a new conclusion: “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”

“That comment: that was it. There’s some things you just don’t say,” said Wright, 44, now an undecided voter. “There’s just a certain amount of etiquette, certain decorum that has to come into this thing.”

Trump said during the Republican primary that he could shoot someone on the street and “not lose voters” and he seemed to be exaggerating only slightly. He was gaffe proof, Teflon Don, leader of a political cult whose hypnotized admirers would love him no matter what he did.

No longer. Not even close.

His campaign rallies are as crowded and raucous as ever. Polling data and interviews, though, suggest that a small but important minority of former devotees is abandoning him over new qualms about his character, temperament and judgment.

“I live in the country and I think I want to make one of those bunkers like they used to when we were afraid of nuclear war. Because every time he opens his mouth, I feel like he’s putting us at risk,” said Kimberly McBride, 45, of Louisiana. “I think he’s going to get us all killed.”

McBride, a former teacher with health challenges, is struggling to pay her mortgage and she was drawn to Trump’s economic message. She was aghast, though, when he invited Russian hackers in late July to obtain Clinton’s emails. When he then insulted the Muslim parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, she broke with her husband and flipped to Clinton.

The Khan controversy appears to have been a campaign tipping point. Polls suggest that well over half of Republicans disapproved of Trump’s furious response, which reinforced Clinton’s criticism of his temper.

“He doesn’t act like a presidential candidate and some days he hardly acts like an adult,” said Nick Lucasti, 19, an engineering student in Indiana. “The constant name-calling and slander are not necessary.”

Lucasti had once liked Trump’s outspokenness and promise to improve border security. After the Republican convention a month ago, he decided he could no longer tolerate the businessman’s refusal to moderate his remarks or make his vague pledges more specific and realistic.

“For a while I thought he was very metaphorical — his ‘wall’ was really just a metaphor for him wanting to secure the borders,” said Lucasti, now undecided. “After months of watching him, though, I now know for sure that this guy honestly wants to build a concrete wall hundreds of miles long. Just ridiculous.”

It is impossible to know how many supporters have become defectors. Swing-state polls, though, show a decline in his share of the vote as Clinton’s has increased sharply. In must-win Pennsylvania, he has fallen from 44 per cent in July to 40 per cent today. In New Hampshire, he has gone from 42 per cent to 36 per cent.

“He has been crushed in the last couple weeks,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “He’s losing people from every possible demographic.”

And he is struggling with the right far more than Democratic nominee Clinton is struggling with the left. Clinton has the support of about 90 per cent of Democrats, Trump about 80 per cent of Republicans.

“A lot of the summer has not been used well,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

The Star interviewed 10 people who have recently ditched Trump or wavered. They cited a wide variety of complaints: his vice-presidential choice of religious conservative Mike Pence, his insistence that Barack Obama is “the founder” of Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, even his rejection of a debate with Bernie Sanders. By far the most common concern, though, was his behaviour.

“There was just something off about him,” said Alabama finance student Frank Smyser, 21, who ditched Trump a month ago in favour of Libertarian Gary Johnson.

Nate Harlan, a 26-year-old Ohio student from a Republican-leaning “lower-middle-class” family, became a Trump supporter after it became clear that Ohio Gov. John Kasich was not going to win. By July, he had grown dismayed by Trump’s “racism,” failure to offer detailed plans and constant pessimism.

“It just seems so much that when he speaks, he’s always angry,” said Harlan, now backing Green Party Leader Jill Stein. “It doesn’t really seem like he’s trying to project this good image of my own country onto me. He’s trying to project an image of ‘you shouldn’t like your country.’ ”

Rhonda Loomis, a Republican former city councillor in Newark, Ohio, spent part of early August begging Trump on Twitter to stop calling Sen. Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” stop veering from message, stop tweeting, stop talking.

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“Whether you care or not,” she told him, “you lost my vote. I won’t vote at all for the first time in my life. You are coming unglued.”

By Friday, the 57-year-old office manager had found reason for hope. Trump had delivered two consecutive rally speeches from a Teleprompter script. He then visited the site of the flooding in Louisiana.

“I am tentatively hanging on the caboose of the Trump train again. I am ready to get off if it looks like it’s going to derail as bad as it has,” Loomis said. “I guess the ball’s in his court. If he continues to embarrass me: absolutely not.”

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