52 percent say Trump should be charged for urging supporters to march on Capitol: poll

Just over half of the respondents in a new poll say former President Trump should be indicted for encouraging his followers on Jan. 6, 2021, to march to the Capitol, where a mob stormed the building but was ultimately unsuccessful in overturning the 2020 presidential election results.

In the Washington Post-ABC News poll released on Tuesday, 52 percent of respondents said that Trump should be charged for his role in the Capitol riot in comparison to 42 percent who said that he should not be charged and 6 percent who had no opinion.

Respondents also indicated they are divided on the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. 

Forty percent said that they believe the panel is conducting a fair and impartial probe, while a separate 40 percent said that it is not conducting a fair and impartial trial investigation. Another 20 percent said that they had no opinion. 

The poll also found a slightly higher percentage of respondents who identified as Republican or lean Republican who said that they believe that Republican leaders should follow the former president’s leadership. Sixty percent agreed, compared to 57 percent in the days after the Capitol riot.

Only 34 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners polled said that they believe Republican leaders should take the party in a different direction — down from 35 percent when last polled in January 2021.

The poll’s results come just over a month before the House panel is set to hold its first public hearing, slated for June 9. Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters last week that there would be eight hearings during the month, with a mix of daytime and prime-time hours.

The panel said in a court filing in early March that it had “a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

The Washington Post-ABC News survey was conducted from April 24 to April 28 with 1,004 adults polled. The margin of sampling error is 3.5 percentage points.