A new Associated Press poll finds Americans are almost evenly split on whether former President Donald Trump should be sentenced to prison after being found guilty of falsifying business records in New York.
“The public is divided over whether Donald Trump should be sentenced to prison for his felony conviction for falsifying business records in the hush money case,” the AP reports. “Opinions on the conviction itself have remained stable in the weeks since the decision was announced on May 30 with nearly half approving of the jury’s decision and about a quarter disapproving. The public is also divided on whether Trump has received fair treatment from the legal system.”
Trump, convicted in June, is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 18, just weeks ahead of the November election. Experts predict Trump will likely receive probation and a fine, but a prison sentence is a distinct possibility.
The AP/NORC poll, conducted June 20-24, finds 48 percent believe Trump should receive a prison sentence, while 50 percent disagree. That gap is within the poll’s margin of error, meaning Americans are essentially evenly split.
Among independent voters, who will decide the election, 50 percent believe Trump should be imprisoned while 46 percent disagree.
While Americans are split on whether Trump should go to prison, the number who support Trump’s conviction outnumber those who oppose it by nearly a two-to-one margin.
The poll finds 46 percent of Americans support the jury’s decision to convict Trump, while 27 percent disapprove and 25 percent are unsure.
Among independents, 32 percent agree with the conviction, 21 percent disagree and 47 percent are unsure.
The nationwide poll was conducted June 20-24, 2024 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago.
The poll, using online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones, was conducted with 1,088 adults. The margin of sampling error is +/- 4.0 percentage points.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Great America News Desk.
