WASHINGTON (AP) — The first criminal trial of the former president Donald Trump is also the one in which Americans are least convinced he committed a crime, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Only about a third of American adults say Trump did something illegal in the hush-money case for which jury selection began Monday, while nearly half think he did something illegal in the other three criminal cases against him. And they are quite skeptical that Trump will get a fair shake from prosecutors in the case — or that the judge and jurors can be impartial in cases involving him.
Still, half of Americans would consider Trump unfit to serve as president if he is convicted of falsifying business documents to cover up hush money payments to a woman who said he was having an affair with her.
While a jury in New York will decide whether Trump will be convicted of a crime, public opinion about the trial could damage him politically. The poll shows that a conviction could hurt Trump’s campaign. Trump goes into a rematch with President Joe Biden as the first presumptive major party nominee — and the first former president — to be indicted. A verdict is expected in about six weeks, well before the Republican National Convention, where he will accept the Republican nomination.
Trump has made the prosecutions against him a centerpiece of his campaign, arguing without evidence that Biden engineered the cases. That argument helped him consolidate the GOP’s support during the Republican primaries, but a conviction could affect how many Americans — including independent voters and people long skeptical of Trump — perceive his candidacy.
“Any conviction should disqualify him,” said Callum Schlumpf, a 31-year-old engineering student and political independent from Clifton, Texas. “It sets a bad example for the rest of the world. I think it misrepresents us as a country in terms of what we believe is important and virtuous.”
Yet a cloud of doubt hangs over the entire procedure. Only about three in 10 Americans believe the prosecutors who brought charges against Trump are treating the former president fairly. And only about two in 10 Americans are extremely or very confident that the judges and jurors in the cases against them can be fair and impartial.
“It’s very clearly political persecution,” said Christopher Ruff, a 46-year-old politically independent museum curator from Sanford, North Carolina. “I am not a fan of Trump in any way. I didn’t vote for him and never will. But of course it’s all political.”
Consistent with AP-NORC polls from the past year, the new poll found that about half of Americans say Trump did something illegal regarding the classified documents found in his Florida home, and a similar share believe he did something illegal regarding his alleged attempt to interfere with the counting of votes in Georgia in the 2020 presidential election. The poll also found that nearly half of Americans believe he did something illegal in related to his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Prosecutors in New York will argue that Trump falsified his company’s internal records to conceal the true nature of a payment to his former lawyer Michael Cohen. Cohen claims he was instructed by Trump to pay adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 a month before the 2016 election to silence her claims of an extramarital affair with Trump.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the 34 charges and denied any affair with Daniels.
The poll found that 35% of Americans say Trump did something illegal regarding the hush money allegations. Slightly fewer, about three in ten, think he has done something unethical without breaking the law. Fourteen percent think he did nothing wrong at all. Those numbers have not changed significantly in the year since he was first charged in the case.
Republicans are far less likely than Democrats and independents to say Trump committed a crime in the hush money case.
“He did nothing wrong,” said Louie Tsonos, a 43-year-old representative and Republican from Carleton, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. “Because Trump has a lot of money and fame, they want to destroy his reputation. Or at least they try.”
Fewer than one in 10 Republicans say Trump did something illegal in the case, while four in 10 Republicans think he did something unethical but did not break the law. About three in 10 Republicans, like Tsonos, say he has done nothing wrong.
By contrast, about six in 10 Democrats and roughly three in 10 independents believe he did something illegal.
Monica Brown, a Democrat from Knoxville, Tennessee, thinks Trump has done something unethical, but not illegal, in the ongoing criminal case in New York. But a conviction would ruin his credibility as president, she said.
“I don’t believe any president — whether it’s Donald Trump or anyone else — should have a criminal conviction to his name,” said Brown, a 60-year-old veterinary technician and social worker. “Even if it’s related to something like hush money, what respect will they get from anyone? Citizens of the country or world leaders, they will not respect you.”
Nearly six in 10 Republicans say they would consider Trump fit to be president even if he were convicted of falsifying business documents in the hush money case. About 8 in 10 Democrats say Trump would be unfit to serve if convicted. About half of independents think he would be unfit to serve, with 22% saying he would be fit and 30% saying they don’t know enough to say so.
“I don’t think any of those things are relevant to his ability to lead this country,” said Jennifer Solich, a Republican from York, Pennsylvania and a retired nuclear engineer who believes Trump would be fit to serve if he were in New York. Times is convicted. York case. “There may be some unethical aspects to it. I just think it’s more trivial than what we’re dealing with as a nation.”
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Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa.
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The survey of 1,204 adults was conducted April 4-8, 2024, using a sample from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for all respondents.
