Americans are roughly evenly split on whether former President Donald Trump, who was recently convicted of a felony for hush money charges, should serve time in prison, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Policy Research.
WASHINGTON — Americans are about evenly split on whether former President Donald Trump should receive prison time for his criminal acts. Recent felony convictions On suspicion of hush money, AP-NORC Center for Public Policy Research.
Forty-eight percent of American adults say former president and Republican front-runner Trump should go to prison, while 50% say he shouldn’t. About 80% of Democrats think Trump should go to prison, but independents are more divided: About half of independents, 49%, say he should, while 46% say he shouldn’t.
Many Republicans believe Trump was treated unfairly by the justice system and say he should not go to prison, while Democrats are largely confident that prosecutors, judges and juries treated him fairly as a defendant.
The outcome highlighted partisan divisions over the case, the first against a sitting and former U.S. president. Both Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden have made the trial a centerpiece of their campaigns with their respective bases, with Biden frequently pointing out that Trump was the first former president to be convicted of a felony and Trump accusing Democrats of orchestrating the case against him for political purposes.
Trump’s The sentence was postponed The deadline is Thursday, three days before the Republican National Convention begins, and runs through September at the earliest, by which time early voting will likely have begun in several states.
“I thought the whole thing was a sham from the beginning,” said Dolores Mejia, 74, a Republican from Peoria, Arizona, who followed the trial closely. “I wasn’t surprised when he was convicted because the court was in New York, which is a heavily Democratic state. It just seemed like a complete mistrial.”
A small minority of Republicans hold views that differ from the rest of their party: The poll found that 14% of Republicans support convicting Trump and 12% think he should serve time in prison.
“When I first voted for Trump in 2016, I knew he had a big ego and questionable values, but I thought the presidency would be a humiliating experience for him, and I was wrong,” said Lee Gerstenberger, a Pennsylvania Republican who agrees with the jury’s verdict in the New York case and believes Trump should spend at least some time in prison.
“I couldn’t be more disappointed with his behavior both in and out of office,” said the retiree, 71. “There are many Americans who have served time in prison for lesser crimes, and President Trump should not be treated the same way.”
About four in 10 American adults are extremely or very confident that the jury, judge or prosecutor treated Trump fairly. Just under half, 46%, support a conviction in the case, which is about 10%. AP-NORC poll conducted in JuneMeanwhile, about three in ten people disapprove, and a quarter are neutral.
Some Americans believe Trump should not be jailed but reject his claims that he has been treated unfairly by the justice system.
“I don’t think this crime is worth the time,” said Christopher Smith, a 43-year-old independent from Tennessee. “I think what he did by lying on his work record because he was having an affair is more of a moral crime,” Smith said, explaining that prison time should be imposed for crimes where the convicted person actively harms others.
The poll also found that Americans are less divided on another recent high-profile case: Last month, Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted in federal court of three felony counts for lying about drug use while buying a gun. Six in 10 U.S. adults support Hunter Biden’s conviction, with much smaller political divisions: About six in 10 Democrats support it, and about seven in 10 Republicans support it.
About 6 in 10 American adults believe Hunter Biden should receive prison time because he was convicted in the case, and Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to agree that prison time is justified.
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The poll was conducted June 20-24, 2024 among 1,088 adults using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
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Barrow reported from Atlanta.
