More than 80 percent of Republican voters believe that former President Donald Trump should continue running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination despite facing federal felony charges, according to a survey released by the Marist Poll on Friday.
Trump, who has remained the front-runner for the next Republican nomination since launching his reelection campaign in the fall, is facing 37 federal counts over his handling of classified documents upon leaving the White House. The Department of Justice (DOJ) says that Trump took the sensitive material to his private residence in Florida and obstructed governmental efforts to return the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration.
But according to a recent NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll, Trump’s fan base remains steadfast within the GOP even after becoming the first former U.S. president in history to face a federal indictment. Out of the 1,327 adults surveyed from June 12 to June 14, 83 percent of Republican voters said they believed Trump should continue to run, and an additional 41 percent of independent voters agreed that he should stay in the race.
On the flip side, 87 percent of registered Democratic voters said that Trump should drop out of the 2024 race in light of the DOJ charges against him, as did 56 percent of respondents across party lines. The Marist Poll survey was conducted in days immediately leading up to and after Trump appeared at a Miami federal courthouse for his arraignment.
Preliminary polling has continued to give Trump a massive edge over his challengers for 2024. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis often polls the second highest out of the long list of GOP contenders, but according to national polling averages compiled by FiveThirtyEight, Trump is leading DeSantis by roughly 32 percentage points across the board as of Friday.
In the Marist Poll study, 64 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said that they were more likely to support Trump if he keeps running in the 2024 election over another Republican candidate, and the former president scored a 76 percent approval rating from the same pool of respondents.
This shows a jump in support for Trump since February, when 68 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents told the Marist Poll that they had a favorable view of the former president. February’s poll was conducted before Trump faced criminal charges in Manhattan or from the DOJ.
If the former president can hold his lead, 2024 is set to be a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden, who is currently the front-runner for the next Democratic nomination. Polling data between Biden and Trump show to be much more entangled, however, with neither candidate holding a consistent lead over the other since both men formally entered the race.
When looking at the average point lead in 29 polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight from May 8 to June 13, Newsweek found that both Trump and Biden led on an even number of occasions, with Trump having a slight larger average percentage point lead at 3.6 compared to Biden’s 3.25.