In new polling from a team at Marist College done in collaboration with NPR and PBS News, a majority of Americans says that Donald Trump should definitely or probably get time in jail after his felony conviction at a New York City trial where he faced accusations of falsifying business records.
The jury-upheld allegations were connected to hush money from before the 2016 presidential election for a woman named Stormy Daniels, who allegedly had a sexual encounter with Trump some years prior to his successful campaign. She herself testified at trial, as did Michael Cohen, the former Trump ally and “fixer” who provided Daniels with the funds and was then, as prosecutors told it, repaid with funds misrepresented by the records that formed the crux of the case against Trump.
“Donald Trump was found guilty on all 34 counts in the New York hush money trial. He will be sentenced in July,” poll respondents were told. Among U.S. adults generally (as opposed to registered voters), 51 percent said Trump should definitely or probably go to prison, while 47 percent said the opposite, with just a small sliver of the total — two percent — unsure. Among registered voters, the results were the same except for an extra point in the column of those saying he definitely or probably shouldn’t be jailed. (In polling such as this, rounding can sometimes make the portions not add up to an even 100 percent.)
Among suburban/small city women — an often discussed demographic and voter group — 62 percent thought that Trump should definitely or probably be imprisoned following his New York conviction. That doesn’t seem, of course, to bode particularly well for Trump’s chances with these voters in the presidential election this year.
