This post was originally published on this site
https://images.mktw.net/im-86538527In the wake of the news that Colorado’s Supreme Court has barred Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause, a new poll shows how Republican voters are sticking with the former president through his legal problems.
About 62% of GOP primary voters said Trump should remain their party’s 2024 nominee if he wins the primary even if he’s subsequently convicted of a federal crime. That’s according to a New York Times/Sienna College poll released Wednesday and conducted Dec. 10-14.
About 32% say he shouldn’t be the nominee in that case, while 6% said they didn’t know or declined to say, as shown in the Times chart below.
NYT
While the new poll was conducted before the Colorado court’s decision, a Times report said its findings “show the remarkable degree to which Republican voters are willing to look past Trump’s legal jeopardy.” The report quoted GOP voters such as Nykhael Kim, a 39-year-old sales manager in South Carolina, who said he’s supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his party’s primary but still sees the prosecution of Trump as “politically motivated.”
Trump is the frontrunner in the 2024 GOP primary, while DeSantis and Nikki Haley are battling for second place, well behind the former president.
The Colorado ruling is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and there are expectations Trump will prevail at that level.
“The court is 6-3 conservative (three of the justices were appointed by Donald Trump), thus it’s fairly likely that the court will rule in Trump’s favor, making a case that the Colorado court could not prove that Trump is an insurrectionist,” said Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF Investments, in a note.
Trump’s legal problems include his indictments this summer in Washington, D.C., and Georgia’s Fulton County in election-interference cases tied to his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 presidential race. He has denied wrongdoing and argued the charges are politically motivated, as he did with his spring indictments in a hush-money case and a classified-documents case.
Related: Donald Trump indicted again. Can he still run for president?
