WASHINGTON - Former US president Donald Trump is still the front runner for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, a survey conducted mostly after he announced he was facing federal indictment shows, with 53 per cent of Republican and GOP-leaning voters supporting him.
In the Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, 23 per cent backed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and other GOP candidates all remained in the single digits. In May, Trump garnered 56 per cent of the support, and Mr DeSantis followed with 25 per cent.
Trump also touted a surge in campaign contributions from his indictment. His campaign announced on Wednesday it raised more than US$4.5 million (S$6 million) from digital solicitations “in just a few short days” since the indictment, as well as US$2.1 million from a previously planned fund-raiser held on Tuesday night at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.
He pleaded not guilty in a federal court in Miami on Tuesday to 37 felony counts related to mishandling classified materials and conspiring to stymie efforts by US officials to recover them.
The first former president to face federal charges, he has called the indictment “election interference” by Democrats.
Trump saw a bump in the RealClearPolitics average of polls after he was indicted on April 4 in Manhattan on charges related to hush-money payments to an adult-film star and again after a federal jury found him liable of assaulting and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
The campaign said it raised US$15.4 million in the days after his indictment in Manhattan, thanks to a surge of support from small-dollar donors.
Trump could face even more legal peril, with Atlanta-area District Attorney Fani Willis signalling she could make a charging decision in August over his efforts to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win. Federal prosecutors also continue to investigate Trump for his role in the Jan 6 insurrection.
“A federal indictment. A court date on a litany of charges. A blizzard of critical media coverage. The negative impact on the former president’s standing with voters? Not much at all,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement.
The Quinnipiac survey of 700 Republican and GOP-leaning voters was conducted on June 8-12 with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.7 percentage points. BLOOMBERG
