Trump's aging Republican machine shows cracks as younger voters buck orders: report

President Donald Trump's Republican Party has been shifting, and younger voters have appeared to start questioning his demands, according to a new report on Tuesday.

The Bulwark editor at large William Kristol, a former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle, described recent polling that shows Trump does have loyalists, but those followers are aging. He points to signs that a "fair number of young" MAGA voters could be "ready to defect from Trumpism."

"It is, as Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday, Trump’s party," Kristol wrote. "The new New York Times/Siena poll shows Trump with the approval of 37 percent of all Americans, with 59 percent disapproving. But 76 percent of Republicans and Republican learners continue to approve of their leader, with only 19 percent breaking ranks. What’s more, a majority of Republican voters still want their next presidential candidate to follow Trump’s lead rather than move in a new direction."

That's not the case for some young Republican voters.

"But the younger you are, the less likely you are to be a true believer," Kristol wrote. "Just 61 percent of Republican voters under 45 approve of Trump, while 33 percent disapprove. By contrast, among those 45 and up, 83 percent approve and just 13 percent disapprove. Only a third of younger Republicans want the next nominee to follow Trump’s lead, by contrast with two-thirds of their parents and grandparents. And polling for today’s primary in Kentucky shows a massive generation gap, with older voters in overwhelming support of Trump’s choice, and younger voters willing to buck Trump’s orders."

"So it is Trump’s party. But Trump’s party does seem to be an aging one and a shrinking one," Kristol added.