In polling from The Economist and YouGov that concluded August 29, a majority of respondents said they believed Mike Pence to have done the right thing on January 6, 2021. On that day, Pence, who was vice president, ultimately went along with the complete certification of the election results from the just concluded presidential race, refusing the pressure he’d been facing from Donald Trump and allies of his.
The portion agreeing with Pence’s actions was at 51 percent, while those calling his move the wrong decision were only 18 percent of the overall total. The remainder said they didn’t know. During the recently held first debate in the GOP presidential primary, this question was raised of whether the candidates onstage (who didn’t include Trump) agreed with the path Pence took. In a moment that drew criticism, Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis initially dodged the question, though he eventually provided some sort of tepid support for the former vice president, who was also on the stage. Trump, of course, continues to contend he was denied his supposedly rightful win in the 2020 presidential election, but these numbers show many Americans are simply not with him on this.
Nearly half of respondents in this same polling said it was either somewhat or very likely that Trump will be convicted of a crime in one of his four criminal cases before the 2024 presidential election. Only 13 percent found it to be “not likely at all”!
Trump has formally made an expected plea of not guilty in his most recent criminal case, which was filed in Georgia and alleges a conspiracy to target that state’s election results from 2020. He declined a formal appearance in court for that stage of the proceedings. John Eastman, another defendant in the same case, recently made what some criticized as potentially condemning comments in a Fox interview, where the lawyer explicitly aligned himself with the idea of Pence having delayed the Congressional certification of the results by seeking further consideration by state legislators around the country.
