Eighty-eight percent of those who voted for Donald Trump approved of the job he is doing as president. But there is erosion among voters who backed Barack Obama in 2012 but switched to Trump in 2016. | Alex Brandon/AP Poll: Obama-Trump voters drifting away from the president

Donald Trump is losing support from voters who crossed over to back him in last year’s election, according to a new study released Wednesday.

A new survey from the bipartisan Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, which has been interviewing the same voters repeatedly for the past six years, identifies which voters have drifted away from Trump over the first six months of his presidency — and points to the danger for Republicans if the party can’t bring them back into the fold in the upcoming off-year and midterm elections.


Among all Trump voters, the president's approval rating remains high: The vast majority, 88 percent, approved of the job he is doing as president. But there is erosion among voters who backed Barack Obama in 2012 but switched to Trump in 2016. Only 70 percent of those Obama-Trump voters approved of the job the president is doing. And 22 percent disapproved — a rate more than twice the 9 percent of all Trump voters who disapproved.

Sixteen percent of these Obama-Trump voters said they regretted their choice in last year's election — a small but significant number that again outpaces the 6 percent of all Trump voters who regret voting for him.

“What’s surprising is in the face of all of these events that often are expected to shake up politics, we’re seeing a high amount of stability,” said Robert Griffin, director of quantitative analysis at the liberal Center for American Progress and a member of the bipartisan study group. “But [Obama-Trump voters are] showing the highest amounts of regret in their vote of any group that we examined.”

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The survey of 5,000 Americans — a so-called panel-back poll of those who had been interviewed in 2011, 2012 and 2016 — was conducted in July of this year. Trump's overall approval rating in the survey was 42 percent, compared with 54 percent who disapproved. Since July, most public polls suggest the percentage of Americans who approve of Trump’s job performance has declined.

Trump's ratings among his own voters have proved mostly durable. The same is true among voters who supported Hillary Clinton. Trump's disapproval rating among Clinton voters was 96 percent — 8 points higher than Trump's approval rating among his own voters. Only 2 percent of Clinton voters approved of Trump's job performance.

If support for the president among Obama-Trump voters is notably softer, there's little difference between all Clinton voters and those who crossed over from backing Mitt Romney in 2012: Only 2 percent of Romney-Clinton voters approve of Trump's job performance, compared with 87 percent who disapprove.

Very few Romney-Clinton voters want do-overs on their 2016 votes. Only 3 percent said they regretted their vote — far less than the 16 percent of Obama-Trump voters who said the same.

The ambivalence of some Trump voters toward the president could carry over to his party and its fortunes in upcoming elections, the survey suggests. Overall, Democrats had a 7-point advantage on the poll’s generic congressional ballot question, 43 percent to 36 percent.

While very few Trump voters indicated that they would support a Democrat for Congress, 20 percent are uncertain for whom they would vote, or they wouldn’t vote at all. By contrast, less than 10 percent of Clinton voters were undecided about their vote for Congress.

The same holds true for crossover voters. A generic Republican leads among Obama-Trump voters by a 22-point margin, but 45 percent of Obama-Trump voters were undecided. Among Romney-Clinton voters, Democrats lead by the same 22-point margin, but only 17 percent were undecided.

“There’s just a higher amount of uncertainty in Trump’s coalition,” said Griffin. “This was probably something like 9 percent of the people who voted for him. They’re highly uncertain about what they’re going to do in this upcoming election.”

But there still a lot of time between now and November 2018, Griffin cautioned.

“We’re still a year out. Lots of people can change their minds. Lots of people can come home to their party,” he said. “This is just a snapshot of where things are now, not a prediction of where they will be.”