Former President Donald Trump’s support among New Hampshire Republicans remains solid.
A significant majority – 62 percent – of Republican primary voters say they would vote for Trump even if he’s convicted of a felony by the time they cast their ballots for president, according to a new NHJournal/co-efficient poll.
Another 57 percent of respondents said they’d vote for Trump even if he were “serving time in prison” on Election Day, according to the poll.
The survey of 862 likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent. It was conducted Aug. 5-7, after federal Special Counsel Jack Smith announced the former president’s indictment on four felony counts alleging he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
While some of Trump’s Republican primary opponents — including his former running mate, Mike Pence — have hammered the front-runner on the latest of three indictments, many prominent Republicans have come to Trump’s defense.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) noted the unequal treatment between the allegations behind the latest Trump indictment and former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential election loser Hillary Clinton’s phony claims that Trump was an “illegitimate president” and that the election was rigged.
“You shouldn’t be prosecuted for your thought. The difference here is when Hillary Clinton said it, nothing happened to her. When they said it in Georgia’s election, nothing happened to them either. When the DNC said it, nothing happened to them either,” McCarthy said last week while traveling in his district. “So, stop using government to go after people who politically disagree with you, that is wrong, and that should stop now.”
It’s that idea that President Joe Biden is using federal law enforcement to target his biggest political opponent that is underpinning the strong show of loyalty among the conservative base for the former president, pundits say.
“As a pollster, I wonder if there is any other political figure in America who could generate this level of loyalty,” co-efficient CEO Ryan Munce told the New Hampshire Journal. “It will be difficult for any Republican to peel away these voters.”
A CBS News /YouGov poll released over the weekend found 59 percent of voters surveyed believe the three indictments against Trump this year are an effort to stop his 2024 campaign — although 51 percent believe Trump attempted to stay in office beyond his term “through illegal means.”
“For most Republicans, the series of indictments are also personal, seeing them as ‘an attack’ on people like them — echoing some of Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail,” CBS News reported.
In the New Hampshire poll, 75 percent of Republicans surveyed said Trump is either innocent or they weren’t sure but believed the former president is “only being prosecuted because he’s Donald Trump.”
Interestingly, Trump’s approval rating remains solid but declining, according to the poll. He’s at 57 percent approval and 33 percent disapproval among likely Republican primary voters, down about seven points since mid-June.
Meanwhile, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu leads all Republicans in popularity, with a 60 percent approval rating. Sununu, once considered a likely contestant for the GOP presidential nomination, has said he will not run for the White House in 2024.
When he ran for president in 2016, Trump told Iowa Republicans he could shoot somebody and not lose a vote.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,” he said at a campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, days before the 2016 Iowa caucuses.
The latest polling data suggests Trump might not be far from the truth.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
