CNN Poll: Majority of Americans Doubt a Fair Trump Trial Outcome

“The jurors you have to worry about are the ones who are sort of ‘Trojan horse jurors,’ who are hiding bias that doesn’t appear on social media or are involved in any formal charges like the one that was just removed today.”

• Only 44 percent had confidence in the jury chosen for the case “will be able to reach a fair verdict”
• 56 percent were skeptical that a “fair outcome is in the cards”

• Only 13 percent said Trump is being treated the same as other criminal defendants
• 34 percent said Trump is being treated more harshly than other defendants
• 34 percent said Trump is being more leniently than other defendants
• 19 percent said they had not heard enough to say
• 0 percent had no opinion

Increasing numbers of voters perceive the criminal trial as irrelevant to Trump’s fitness for the presidency. CNN reported more survey data:

Those assessments of how things are playing out in the courtroom come as a rising share of Americans say the charges in the ongoing trial – related to allegedly falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to an adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election – are irrelevant to his fitness for the presidency even if true (45% say so now compared with 39% last summer, before he became the presumptive Republican nominee for president).

About three-quarters of voters currently backing Trump against President Joe Biden in the 2024 election say they will stick with him even if he is convicted of a crime, while 24% of Trump’s backers say a conviction might cause them to reconsider their support. Trump is charged in four separate cases, and the survey question asked about being convicted of a crime without specifying a charge. The group that might reconsider amounts to about 12% of all registered voters in the poll, more than enough to make a difference in a close contest should he face conviction in any of the four trials he may face between now and Election Day.

The political impact of a possible conviction is difficult to predict, but a look at the characteristics of those Trump backers who say they could reconsider offers some insight. They tend to be younger than other Trump supporters (64% are younger than 50 compared with 37% of those who would not reconsider), are less likely to be White (49% are people of color compared with 17% of those who would not reconsider), are more apt to report being Biden voters in 2020 (20% of them say they backed Biden in 2020 vs. 6% of those who would not reconsider) and are likelier to acknowledge that Biden legitimately won enough votes to win the presidency four years ago (63% vs. 22% among those who would not reconsider). They are also more apt to be political independents (49% vs. 31%) and ideologically moderate (50% vs. 38%).