Poll: Disaffected GOP largely backs Trump

More than half of Republican voters don’t believe Washington politicians represent their views, and a plurality of those voters want Donald Trump to be the party’s presidential nominee.

Fifty-three percent of GOP voters feel that D.C. is unrepresentative of their views, compared to 27 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in a new CNN/ORC poll released Monday.

{mosads}Trump holds a strong lead over that share of the Republican electorate — 24 percent of the disaffected back him. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is in second with 13 percent of that group, with the rest of the field far behind.

These GOP voters also are more enthusiastic about voting for president and are more likely to see illegal immigration as their top issue. While 56 percent of all Americans want the country to prioritize granting undocumented immigrants legal status, 63 percent of Republicans want the priority to be stopping the flow of illegal immigration and deporting those already in the country illegally.

Trump’s controversial rhetoric on immigration has drawn the ire of other Republican candidates, but he’s drawn strong crowds to his immigration rallies. The first batch of CNN/ORC’s numbers on Sunday found Trump leading the field with 18 percent of the GOP vote.

CNN/ORC polled 1,017 adults, 898 of which are registered voters with margins of error between 3 and 3.5 percent depending on the sample. The poll spanned July 22-25, after Trump’s controversial comments on Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) war record.