Fewer voters think Trump has committed crimes, polls show

Late last year, it seemed likely that former President Donald J. Trump would spend part of the 2024 campaign facing at least one, if not several, criminal trials. As he was accused of more crimes and as trial dates approached, the share of voters who said he had committed crimes rose.

The Trump team has pushed to delay the trials as much as possible, hoping to delay any rulings until after the general election in November. In addition, his team has tried to spin the charges for any political advantage it could bring.

The tactic may pay off. The share of Americans who say Trump committed serious federal crimes has risen steadily since the fall of 2022 and has fallen since December, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows.

Voters across the political spectrum are now less likely to say that Mr. Trump has acted criminally. Democrats are 7 percentage points less likely to say they think Trump has committed crimes, while the share of political independents who say the same has fallen by 9 percentage points. Republicans have remained relatively stable, down only one point since late last year.

In December, Trump’s civil cases dominated headlines and he faced gag orders. But the pace of legal developments has slowed in some cases and turned in Trump’s favor in others as he awaits word from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether he is immune from prosecution.

Trump’s team cheered the delay in his federal election interference trial, which many of his advisers say is the one with the most potential to be politically damaging. And while they are not looking forward to the prospect of going to trial in New York later this month, they are less concerned that the details of the case will offend voters, who they believe have become accustomed to reports of his personal behavior.

“Trump’s lawsuits don’t really affect my vote,” said Holly Call, 35, who plans to vote for Trump in the fall. “Some charges are unfounded, and some charges have other people doing the same things and not being brought to justice. There are a number of things he may have been guilty of; they are not serious crimes.”

Ms. Call, a stay-at-home mother from Newton, Utah, said she would have preferred to vote for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida or one of Trump’s other Republican opponents, but that she supported the former president because of his conservative values.

Yet 21 percent of Republicans — including an identical share of Trump supporters — said their party’s likely nominee had committed serious federal crimes.

Even among Democrats, the share who say Mr. Trump has acted criminally has fallen. While a large majority – 85 percent – ​​still say he has committed crimes, that is down from 92 percent in December.

These shifts have not necessarily translated into greater support for Mr. Trump. Instead, the share who say he acted criminally and said they planned to vote for another candidate — or not vote if the choices were only Mr. Trump or his likely opponent, President Biden — has risen.

Joseph Kozinski, who describes himself as a political moderate, says he does not think Trump has committed crimes. He hasn’t made a decision yet on who he plans to support in November, but he worries that “they’re trying to put together things that aren’t there,” he said, adding: “They’re accusing him of things those other people would never be accused of it.”

‘I think if there is something substantial, it should certainly be brought to court. But some things are being invented now,” said Mr. Kozinski, 61, a retiree from Jasper County, S.C

Mr Trump will go on trial in a New York state court on March 25 on charges that he falsified corporate records during the 2016 campaign to cover up hush money payments to a porn actress. Another state case, in Fulton County, Georgia, alleging crimes committed in his efforts to remain in office, has become embroiled in questions about the duration of a romantic relationship between the district attorney, Fani Willis, and the prosecutor whom she has appointed as a member of the court. case of Nathan Wade.

The punishment in the hush money case could include jail time. But compared to the national scope of the two federal cases facing Mr. Trump, he is accused of breaking the laws by trying to undermine his 2020 election loss and hoarding large amounts of classified material at his private club in Florida and to have made attempts to retrieve the documents. them – the New York case is considered less important.

If Mr. Trump is re-elected, he is expected to make efforts to get the government to drop federal cases against him or possibly try to pardon himself. He wouldn’t be able to do that with the state’s cases, raising questions about what would happen if he wins the 2024 race after being convicted in New York and ultimately sentenced to prison.

Only 32 percent of Americans considered the charges in the New York hush-money case “very serious.” September survey conducted by Quinnipiac, compared to 56 percent who said the same about the federal election interference lawsuit. The poll, conducted before Ms. Willis’ testimony made headlines, also found that 54 percent said the allegations in the Georgia trial were very serious.

Mr. Trump has characterized all four cases — as well as two civil lawsuits in New York — as a “witch hunt” and baselessly accused Mr. Biden of taking charge. The civil fraud lawsuit against Mr. Trump and his company, which just concluded with a huge financial judgment, has its roots long before Mr. Biden even announced his 2020 presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, over the course of the past eight years of political life, Trump has used repetition to blunt some of the responses to him and his actions, and to the accusations of his critics. And he has spent months describing the legal actions aimed at holding him accountable as “weaponization” of the government.

At his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Mr. Trump held a brief news conference on Monday to celebrate a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said officials in Colorado could not remove him from the primary. A case in state courts there had charged Mr. Trump with engaging in “insurrection,” which, under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, would disqualify him from office.

But Mr. Trump also took the opportunity to attack all prosecutions, as well as Mr. Biden. After calling the proliferation of charges and civil actions against him all part of a “rigged” system, Trump insisted that that’s how the public saw it.

“I’m fortunate that I can explain it to the public,” Mr. Trump said, “because if you couldn’t explain it, the public wouldn’t know. They would believe what they see.”