Majority of Republicans support Trump staying in presidential race despite indictment: poll

An overwhelming majority of Republicans said former President Trump should stay in the 2024 presidential race despite the most recent federal indictment filed against him, according to a new poll. 

An NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist College poll released Friday showed that 82 percent of Republicans said Trump should remain in the race.

Half of the respondents said Trump did nothing wrong in relation to the probe into the classified and sensitive documents he kept at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency ended. More than three-quarters of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents also said they have a favorable view of Trump, up from 68 percent in March. 

Almost two-thirds of Republicans said they will continue to support Trump for the GOP nomination if he stays in the race, while 32 percent said they will support another candidate. 

But those numbers contrast with Democrats and the public at large, with 87 percent of Democrats and 58 percent of independents saying he should drop out. Overall, 56 percent of adults believe Trump should end his campaign in light of the indictment, while 43 percent said he should continue. 

“As former President Trump deals with his latest legal woes, Republicans are mostly standing with him, while Democrats are calling for him to exit the 2024 campaign,” Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said. “Time will tell if this pattern holds, but for now, Republicans are grounded on where they stand on Trump regardless of these unfolding events.” 

The results come after Trump became the first former president to be federally indicted last week. He is facing 37 felony counts — most of which are charges of willful retention of national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act — and has pleaded not guilty.

He was also indicted in New York on charges of falsifying business records over payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election for her to remain quiet about an affair she allegedly had with the former president. 

Trump vowed to “never drop out” of the race following the indictment in a fundraising email sent Tuesday as he pleaded not guilty to all charges he is facing. 

Reactions to Trump’s indictment has been mixed among the other GOP presidential candidates, but former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has called on Trump to drop out of the race, first after the New York indictment and again after the federal one. 

Polling has continued to show Trump with sizeable leads over his GOP rivals for the nomination. 

He led in a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll released Friday with 59 percent of the vote among registered Republicans. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was the closest behind him with 14 percent. 

The Marist poll was conducted from June 12-14 among 1,327 adults, including 467 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents. The margin of error for the entire sample was 3.5 points, while the margin for Republicans was 5.9 points.