65% of Republicans still want to see their lawmakers exhibit loyalty to Trump: Poll

Republicans still value loyalty to Donald Trump, with 35 percent saying in a new poll that it's 'very important' that their representatives locally and in Washington align with the former president.

A whopping 81 percent of Republicans surveyed in a CBS News Poll released on Sunday say that they prefer candidates who have similar policies and proposals to Trump.

Most rank-and-filed Republicans want to see party loyalty to the former president.

A combined 65 percent of respondents say loyalty to Trump is either very or somewhat important, while only 14 percent said it 'wasn't important at all' and 21 percent said it was 'not too important' to them.

The results are similar to the same survey taken last year, and it exhibits very little reassessment on the part of the Republican Party and how they feel about Trump as a party leader.

A new poll shows that 65% of Republicans think loyalty to former President Donald Trump is still important

This comes despite a distancing from Trump by several Republican lawmakers – and even GOP voters have said in certain polling that they would prefer Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Trump.

Trump announced in mid November that he is making a third run for the White House in 2024 after failing to win reelection in 2020.

When it comes to the 2020 presidential elections, 66 percent of Republicans say they want candidates who align with Trump's perspective on the outcome, while 34 percent say they want candidates who are opposed to the former president's views.

Even though right-leaning voters say their views haven't changed, there has been a shift regarding the candidates that Trump had endorsed.

Eight in 10 polled by CBS News would want their preferred candidate to back Trump's 2020 election fraud claims

In the 2022 midterm elections, many candidates that won the primary due to the backing of Trump failed to win against their Democratic challengers.

The losses taken by the GOP in the midterms included a lot of election denier candidates who claim the 2020 results were illegitimate. In fact, Trump's endorsements prove to result in a net-negative for voters in November.

Republicans are most split 50/50 on whether they want a candidate who mirrors Trump's mannerisms and how he handles himself in the public eye.

DeSantis is emerging quickly as an alternative to Trump considering his staunch Republican conservative values and policies – but his near opposite public appearance from Trump. The Florida governor is much more polished and a career politician compared to Trump's standoff-ish political outsider persona.