More than half of Americans believe former President Donald Trump should face prosecution for alleged crimes he committed while in office, according to a recent poll.
Marquette Law School published the study on Wednesday, and 56 percent of participants believed that Trump should not be exempt from criminal prosecution for his official activities, while 62 percent agreed with this statement regarding “former presidents” in general.
Pollsters cited Trump’s immunity claim in special counsel Jack Smith’s lawsuit against the former president for his alleged conduct during the Capitol rebellion on January 6, 2021. Prosecutors contend that Trump was part of a conspiracy to defraud the United States and was at the core of a plan to prevent President Biden’s votes from being certified that day.
The former president and his legal team have repeatedly asserted that presidential immunity protects his actions both before and during the uprising.
The United States Supreme Court decided to hear the case, with oral arguments scheduled to commence on April 22 on an expedited basis. We anticipate issuing the major verdict by the end of June or sooner.
Pollsters highlighted that Americans’ views on Trump’s immunity argument differed by party, with the vast majority of Democrats rejecting the former president’s assertion.
Approximately 89 percent of Democrats rejected the immunity argument, with only 4 percent agreeing and 7 percent saying they were unsure.
More than half of Republicans—55 percent—believed Trump should be immune from prosecution for official activities, while 27 percent disagreed and 18 percent were unsure. Approximately 32% supported the immunity claim in the broader context of “former presidents,” while 49% opposed it.
“The striking finding is that Republicans reverse themselves when asked about Trump rather than ‘former presidents,'” Charles Franklin, a law and public policy professor and director of the Marquette Law School poll, told CNN.
“One implication is that Republicans are not paying enough attention to Trump’s Supreme Court appeal to realize, without prompting, that the immunity case is about Trump,” he went on to say. “Only when the question directly says, ‘This is about Trump,’ do they swing sharply, reversing what they would think about ‘former presidents’ in general.”
Independents ranged midway between Democrats and Republicans, with 44 percent rejecting Trump’s exemption argument, 11 percent supporting it, and 45 percent saying they didn’t know.
We conducted the poll from March 18 to 28, interviewing 1,000 adults across the country. The margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points.
