Former President Donald Trump arrives at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, Aug. 3, 2023.
Tom Brenner | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Most Americans support the choice by special counsel Jack Smith to prosecute former President Donald Trump for allegedly attempting to overturn his loss within the 2020 election, a recent poll from Quinnipiac University found.
Greater than half of U.S. adults, 54%, said they think Trump should face criminal charges in that case, while 42% disagreed, based on the university’s latest national survey, released Wednesday. That majority included 57% of respondents who said they were independents, and 12% of Republicans, together with nearly all Democrats.
Also, nearly two-thirds of respondents said they considered the federal charges against Trump to be serious, including 52% who said they were “very serious,” the poll found.
“Not only do a big majority of Americans regard the federal charges as serious, greater than half of Americans think the previous president should face prosecution,” Quinnipiac’s polling analyst Tim Malloy said in an announcement.
However the poll also found that Trump’s lead is growing larger within the 2024 Republican presidential primary while his nearest rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, hemorrhages support.
The governor, who was just 6 points behind Trump in Quinnipiac’s national poll in February, trailed the previous president by 39 points within the survey released Wednesday.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the four-count federal indictment charging him with conspiring to subvert the desire of voters and reverse President Joe Biden’s legitimate victory within the 2020 contest.
Quinnipiac surveyed 1,818 American adults Aug. 10-14 in its latest poll, which had a margin of error of two.3 percentage points.
The polling period ended on the identical day that Trump was hit along with his fourth criminal indictment, this one related to his alleged scheme to reverse his 2020 election loss within the state of Georgia.
The state-level indictment, which was returned by a grand jury Monday night, charges Trump and 18 other defendants with a complete of 41 felony counts, 13 against Trump. All of the defendants are charged with violating Georgia’s racketeering statute, which carries a five-year minimum sentence if convicted.
Trump and his co-defendants are required to give up before Aug. 25. Quinnipiac didn’t ask respondents concerning the Georgia case.
Trump now faces 4 lively criminal cases, an unprecedented situation for any former U.S. president or current presidential candidate to be in. Trump’s legal troubles are looming over his campaign schedule and putting a significant financial strain on his political operation. A minimum of one among Trump’s cases is scheduled to start before the November 2024 election.
Sixty-eight percent of respondents in Quinnipiac’s poll said that if an individual is convicted of a felony, they mustn’t be eligible to run for president.
Yet Trump’s prior indictments — all of which were filed after he launched his latest White House bid — have done no discernible damage to his status because the clear front-runner within the Republican primary.
Quinnipiac’s latest poll of the GOP primary field found 57% support for Trump amongst Republicans and GOP-leaning voters. DeSantis, meanwhile, was the highest alternative of just 18% of this same group, his lowest level of support in any Quinnipiac poll this yr.
The poll’s findings align with FiveThirtyEight’s polling tracker, which shows Trump maintaining a sizeable lead over a crowded field while DeSantis’ support dwindles.
Minutes before the poll was released, Trump touted his commanding lead over his GOP primary rivals in a social media post that also railed against Fox News’ coverage of him.
Fox “goes all out, just as they did in 2016, to figure who on this very large, but failing, Republican field, can beat your favorite President, Donald John Trump,” he wrote on Truth Social.
“They use only essentially the most negative polls, that are still great for me, and do all the pieces possible to indicate that they still have a likelihood,” he said.