Is Trump being dumped by GOP?

As U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has seen his approval rating plunge due to his disparaging remarks against the parents of a fallen Muslim U.S. solider and other fiascos, party insiders and outsiders suggest that the party should focus on congressional elections by separating them from the presidential election.

The presidential election in November will be held simultaneously with the congressional elections (34 of 100 Senate seats and all of the 435 House seats up for grabs). The new strategy is suggested based on judgement that Trump’s falling approval rate could negatively affect the congressional elections. Currently, the Republican Party controls majority seats in both the House and Senate due to outcomes of the 2014 interim elections.

According to the New York Times on Saturday, strategies at the Super Pac (political activity committee), the political fundraising body for the Republican Party, considers Trump’s election loss a done deal, and is discussing production of a campaign video promoting the logic that the Grand Old Party or GOP should control the Congress in case Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton wins the presidency.

In fact, a flurry of Republican congressmen are declaring their decision not to support Trump, fueling such mood to intensify. Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) became the first among the Republican congressmen on Thursday to declare that he would vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson for president in the upcoming election. Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey said on the day that voters would make separate choices in the presidential election and the Senate elections. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson and Congressman David Young (R-Iowa) staged their own events at different sites as Trump conducted his electioneering in their districts on Thursday.

Congressmen are starting to openly "boycott Trump" as his approval rating began to lag behind Clinton’s not only in national polls but also in polls across their constituencies. In the state of Pennsylvania, a highly contentious district, Trump’s approval rating at 38 percent is 11 percentage points behind Clinton’s, which stands at 49 percent (Franklin & Marshall poll on Wednesday). Even in the state of Georgia, a traditional Republican turf, Trump posted 40 percent in approval rating, trailing Clinton at 44 percent (Atlanta Journal poll on Thursday).

Such a phenomenon is partly due to unique U.S. presidential election system, in which voters cast ballots for senator, congressman and president at the same time in the upcoming election. Voters are supposed to pick the presidential candidate of their choice at the top of the ballot, before choosing candidates of House and Senate members, and there is a chance that people against Trump could vote for candidates of other parties rather than GOP. Political circles in Washington call such a phenomenon "coattail effect" by comparing this to the tail of the coat touching the floor in winter. That is, voters who are not sufficiently aware of the U.S. congressional elections cast their votes for the other elections in tune with their preference for a presidential candidate.