Poll: Most Predict Trump Conviction ‘on Some Charges’ in Business Records Trial, Plurality Says It Has Been Unfair

Most voters predict the business records trial will lead to a conviction of former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, “on some charges,” and a plurality thinks the trial has been unfair, a Suffolk University/USA Today poll shows.

This portion of the survey, shared in an emailed press release from the university, finds that 65 percent of voters “believe Trump will be found guilty” on at least some of the 34 counts of falsification of business records that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Office has brought forth.

“Exactly half (50%) predicted Trump would be found guilty on some — but not all — counts, while 15% said they believed he would be found guilty on all counts,” the release notes. “Another 23% said he would likely be found not” guilty.

A plurality of voters also feel that Trump is not getting a fair trial:

More than four in ten voters (44%) said they don’t believe the trial so far has been fair, while 39% said Trump was getting a fair trial, with 16% of voters left undecided. Fairness cut along party lines, with 76% of Democrats saying Trump is receiving a fair trial, while 80% of Republicans claimed that the trial has not been fair. Independents were split evenly on the question of fairness at 37% each, with 24% undecided.

Notably, interviews for the survey commenced on April 30, the same day New York County Judge Juan Merchan found Trump in criminal contempt of court for the first time for violating a gag order.

Merchan fined Trump $1,000 per violation on a total of nine infractions and ordered him to remove seven posts from Truth Social and two posts from his campaign website on April 30. Nearly a week later, on Monday, Merchan found the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in contempt of court for a tenth violation that occurred before the last order, as Breitbart News noted.

Merchan told the 45th president he would consider jailing him if he violated the order in the future. Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong wrote:

Merchan said Monday he would consider jail time for Trump if he continued to violate a gag order he placed on him that bans him from speaking about prosecutors (other than Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg), their staff, other members of the court, Merchan’s family members (including his daughter, who works on digital campaigns for Democrats), witnesses — including Michael Cohen, who has incessantly bashed Trump on social media — and jurors.

“The last thing I want to consider is jail,” Merchan said Monday. “You are [the] former president and possibly the next president.”

The poll, which also showed Trump and Biden deadlocked at 37 percent, sampled 1,000 registered voters from April 30 to May 3, 2024, and the margin of error was ± 3.1 percentage points.