Democrat voters think Donald Trump arrest is ‘election interference’

A majority of Democrat voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020 think the investigations and criminal indictments against Donald Trump constitute “an interference in the 2024 presidential election,” according to a new poll conducted exclusively for Newsweek.

The Redfield & Wilton Strategies survey reveals a majority in every age group, gender and geographic location, except for the Northeast, think Trump’s ongoing legal difficulties constitute election interference in a major boost to the Republican frontrunner.

On Thursday, Trump was arrested and then released on a $200,000 bond over claims he broke the law attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election result in Georgia. The former president has strongly denied any wrongdoing, claiming the allegations against him are a “witch hunt” and “election interference.”

Trump has also pleaded not guilty to a series of charges related to claims he orchestrated the payment of hush money to an adult movie star ahead of the 2016 election, mishandled classified documents after leaving the White House and illegally tried to block Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory on a nationwide basis. No previous U.S. president has ever been charged with a criminal offense.

The Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll found an average of 59 percent of Americans believed the four cases are an interference, versus 19 percent who disagreed, while another 22 percent said they didn’t know.

Among respondents who voted for Trump, 65 percent said the charges were interference, with just 10 percent saying they were not and 25 percent unsure. Notably, 58 percent of 2020 Biden voters also thought them an interference, compared to 27 percent who said they disagreed with the statement and 15 percent who didn’t know.

The view that Trump’s legal difficulties amounted to interference was held by some respondents among all the age groups surveyed, though younger voters were the least sympathetic to the former president.

Among Generation Z, aged 18-26, 55 percent thought them interference, versus 30 percent who disagreed—for Millennials, aged 27 to 42, the figure was 58 percent versus 15 percent. Generation X, between 43 and 58 in age, the belief was that the cases were election interference by 61 percent compared to 16 percent, while those aged 59 and over held the same view by 59 percent to 20 percent.

Both men and woman considered the investigations to be interference, with 55 percent of males and 62 percent of females holding this view. Correspondingly, just 22 percent of men said they were not, along with 16 percent of women. In the South, West and Midwest, 64 percent, 56 percent and 61 percent of respondents dubbed Trump’s legal battles election interference respectively, versus 18 percent, 15 percent and 19 percent who disagreed.

Only in the Northeast did fewer than half consider them interference, though at 46 percent it was still larger than the 27 percent who disagreed and the remaining 27 percent who said they did not know.

A majority of Americans also thought Trump is likely to be “convicted and imprisoned” on at least one of the four indictments he faces. In total 57 percent of respondents think this was either very likely, likely or somewhat likely, versus 33 percent for somewhat unlikely, unlikely or very unlikely, with the remainder unsure.

The survey of 1,500 U.S. eligible voters was conducted online on August 22 and 23, with data “weighted by age, gender, region, education level, ethnicity and 2020 presidential election vote.”

The results support comments made by Alina Habba, one of Trump’s lawyers, during a Newsmax appearance on Friday. Referring to the former president and Republican 2024 frontrunner, Habba claimed the police mugshot was “one of the best things that ever happened to him.”

However, many on social media were critical of Trump, with the photograph’s release being greeted with a wave of mockery and memes on Thursday.

Newsweek has contacted Trump’s campaign team for comment via the press inquiry form on his official website.