Last week Donald Trump learned that he will stand trial on April 15 in the first of four criminal cases. And his supporters say they simply don’t care whether or not he is convicted.
That is the result of a new Daily Mail/J.L. Partners poll that found only five percent of his supporters would change their vote in November’s election if were to be convicted before then.
Some 93 percent said they would still vote for the president.
Overall, the results of our poll of 1000 likely voters show Trump maintains his four-point lead over President Joe Biden despite his litany of legal woes.
If the election were tomorrow, 43 percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump, compared with 39 percent who said they would vote for Biden.
Only two percent of Trump supporters said they were very unlikely to vote for the former president if he were convicted of a crime before the election, in our poll of 1000 likely voters
Former President Donald Trump sat with a stony face in Manhattan criminal court on Monday morning. He was told he will go on trial on April 15, facing 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. His legal team had requested more time to prepare a defense
Pollster James Johnson, cofounder of J.L. Partners, said Trump was helped by the fact his likely first trial—on charges related to hush money payments to a porn star—was seen as the most politically motivated of the four cases.
‘Up until recently, polls tended to show Trump’s vote diving when the possibility of him being convicted comes up. But in recent polls—and now ours—this has changed,’ said Johnson.
‘Here, 93 percent say they would stick with the president in such a scenario. This might alter if it actually happens—polling can’t predict people’s responses if an event comes to pass—but with the hush money case taking place first (the one that people feel is most likely to be a politically motivated charge), that only helps Donald Trump.
‘So far in this race, indictments have only helped Trump. There are no signs yet that convictions are going to have a different effect.’
The four cases have kept Trump busy for months. He has limited his campaign travel to weekend rallies and instead delivered political speeches from courtroom steps or corridors.
His legal team has lodged multiple legal challenges to prosecutors in Georgia, New York and Florida. And at one point it seemed possible that voters would go to the polls on November 5 without any of the four cases being resolved.
But on Monday a judge in New York told Trump that his trial on charges of falsifying business records will begin in the middle of April.
It could be wrapped up before the end of May.
After leaving court, the former president railed against the prosecutions, claiming them to be a form of election of interference.
Trump has been in and out of court all year and has had to adjust his campaign, delivering political speeches from courtroom halls and holding rallies at weekends
J.L. Partners polled 1000 likely voters from March 20 to 24 via landline, cellphone, SMS and apps. The results carry a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent
The results show Donald Trump maintains his four-point lead over Joe Biden, with a little over seven months to the November 5 presidential election
But he also acknowledged how the New York case could actually help him.
‘Well, it could also make me more popular,’ he told reporters when asked if he was worried about how a conviction could affect the election, ‘because the people know it’s a scam.
‘This is a Biden trial.’
Other polls have suggested that a conviction could cost Trump enough votes to change the outcome of the election.
An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll published in February found that Biden’s one-point overall lead among registered voters extended to six points when respondents were asked for whether a conviction would change things.