A wave of Republican officials abandoned Donald Trump on Saturday, but, at least for now, rank-and-file Republicans are standing by the party's presidential candidate, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted immediately after audio was unearthed Friday that had the GOP nominee crudely bragging about groping women and trying to lure a married woman into an affair.

Despite hurricane-force media hype that Donald Trump’s locker room talk over a decade ago precludes him from the presidency, the GOP base is ignoring its leadership and standing by Donald Trump. A poll by Politico shows:

Overall, fewer than four-in-10 voters -- 39 percent -- think Trump should end his presidential campaign, while only slightly more voters, 45 percent, think he should not drop out. But voters are largely viewing Trump's comments through their own partisan lens: 70 percent of Democrats say Trump should end his campaign, but just 12 percent of Republicans -- and 13 percent of female Republicans -- agree.

These figures reveal that the GOP elite that shuns Trump is more in line with the Democrats than with their own party’s voters.

Is this really a surprise?

The GOP leadership lives in a matrix constructed by the Left. They are surgically bonded to DC, where society is dominated by the progressives’ version of culture. They mistakenly believe that they must cater to the mainstream media, and play the game by the rules dictated by the left.

The mainstream media has pulled out all the stops to mark Trump’s ancient private banter the issue of the moment. Even as no one can claim with a straight face that sodomizing an intern in the Oval Office is less weighty than off color macho repartee.

Trump’s voters simply don’t buy it. And they are grounded in the reality beyond the DC Matrix.

A four percent Hillary Clinton lead is far from decisive. And I do not trust the polling models based on turnout in the last few presidential elections, especially not Romney, who kept parts of the GOP base at home.