49 percent agree with criminal case being brought against Trump: poll

Just under half of Americans say they think it was right for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) to pursue criminal charges against Trump for his role in a 2016 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, according to a new Reuters-Ipsos poll released on Friday.

However, that 49 percent breaks down drastically along party lines, with 84 percent of Democrat respondents agreeing with the decision to bring charges compared to the just 16 percent of Republican respondents who said the same, the poll found.

This partisan split reflects the difference of opinion in Washington, where Republican lawmakers have repeatedly denounced the case as “politically motivated” and an “unprecedented abuse of power.”

Republicans in the Reuters poll largely agreed with such sentiments, with 76 percent saying some members of law enforcement are attempting to delegitimize Trump through politically motivated investigations.

The vast majority of American respondents — 73 percent — say they believe the premise of the case that Trump arranged payments to Daniels and model Karen McDougal to buy their silence about alleged affairs. This includes 55 percent of Republicans, despite Trump’s repeated denials of both affairs.

Trump remains the leading GOP candidate in the 2024 race, with 58 percent of Republicans saying he is their preferred candidate. Only 12 percent of Republican respondents said the charges made them less likely to support the former president, while 40 percent said it made them more likely to vote for him, the poll found.

The former president pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records on Tuesday for the reimbursement payments he made to his former personal attorney Michael Cohen throughout 2017.

The Reuters-Ipsos poll was conducted April 5-6 with 1,004 U.S. adults and had a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.