WASHINGTON (AP) – Most Americans say former President Donald Trump is at least to blame for the Capitol uprising, and about half say the Senate should vote to convict him at the end of the impeachment trial.
According to a survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research this also finds that many Republicans continue to believe – against all odds – that President Joe Biden’s election was illegitimate.
It’s the latest sign of Trump’s disinformation campaign for months it could have lasting ramifications for Biden as he tries to govern a fractured country and underscores the deep partisan factions that will overtake Trump’s presidency. But it also shows some degree of consensus, and even many Republicans say Trump was at least partially responsible for the deadly storm of his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6. in an attempt to overturn the results of the November elections.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe Trump has at least moderate responsibility for non-compliance with the U.S. Capitol, including half who say he has a lot or a lot of it. Just over a third say they have little or no responsibility.
Most Republicans acquit him of guilt, but about 3 in 10 think he is at least moderately guilty of the facts.
Fewer Americans, 47%, believe the Senate should vote to convict Trump after his impeachment trial, which begins next week. Another 40% say he should not be convicted and 12% are unsure. Trump became the first president in the country’s history last month to be indicted twice by the House, but it seems unlikely Democrats will have enough votes to condemn him to the upper house.
Opinions about the trial coincide with partisan lines, with more than eight out of ten Democrats saying the Senate should condemn it, compared to just 1 in ten Republicans. While those who believe he has great responsibility generally believe he should be convicted, among those who say he is only moderately responsible, they say significantly more that the Senate should vote against him than by conviction, between 54% and 19%.
“I think it’s a little ridiculous. Will we start challenging all the presidents we don’t like? “He said 67-year-old Bill Stokes, who lives in Casper, Wyoming, and voted for Trump in November, calling him the ‘least of the bad guys.’
Although Stokes allowed Trump to “perhaps” have some responsibility for the events of January 6, he said, “I don’t think he justifies the dismissal. Maybe censorship, if that’s the case.”
“I do not really feel that I have incited a riot. He asked them to come down there to make a peaceful protest. Maybe he didn’t understand the psychology of the mafia, but I think his responsibility is there: they try to put more things in him than there really is, ”he said.
In interviews, other Republican respondents blamed Trump for inciting the crowd – and some felt he should be held accountable in some way – but did not think the dismissal was the answer given that Trump had already left office. and, they said, he was unlikely to be re-elected.
At the same time, the poll finds that many Republicans agree with the idea, defended by those who stormed the Capitol, that Biden’s election was illegitimate. Overall, 66% of Americans say Biden was legitimately elected president, but 65% of Republicans say he was not..
They include Dolores Mejia, 71, who lives in Peoria, Arizona, and maintains that if all the votes had been counted, “I think Trump would have won, I really think so.”
A lifelong Democrat who changed her party’s record to vote for Trump in November, Mejia cited from rejected conspiracies to friends ’accounts to explain her reservations.
“I do not care what the Democrats say. They stole the election. There’s just no way, with the amount of support we were seeing, watching rallies on TV, things like Truckers for Trump … there’s no way they didn’t steal the election, ”he argued.
Others were more ambivalent. Mark Richardson, a Republican living in High Point, North Carolina, who voted for Trump twice, said he understood why steps had been taken to allow postal voting during the coronavirus pandemic. but he argued that they should never be used again.
“It leaves too much room for questions,” he said. But Richardson, 39, who works in the electric vehicle industry, said the issue of “legitimacy” is more nuanced.
“So I guess it depends on how you formulate the question,” he said. “Do I think every vote I received was legitimate? No, but I think he’s the president, legitimately? Yes. ”
“Joe Biden is the president,” he said. “And that’s good for me.”
Republican Party officials from several battlefields say Biden led, including Arizona and Georgia, have said the election was fair.. Trump’s claims were flatly dismissed in court, including judges appointed by Trump and his former attorney general, William Barr.
Overall, the poll shows that Americans have a more negative than positive view of the Trump presidency and its impact on the country, but opposition is limited among Republicans. Only 36% of Americans in general say Trump was a great president or even a good president, while 50% said he was poor or terrible.
By contrast, in late 2016, when Barack Obama left office, 52% of Americans called him a good or great president, while 28% said he was poor or terrible.
While most Republicans say Trump was a good or great president, 15% call him an average and 11% say he was a poor or terrible president.
Americans are more mixed about how the Trump years impacted them personally. In fact, there are more people who call themselves better than worse than before Trump took office, with a margin of 38% to 27%.
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The AP-NORC survey of 1,055 adults was conducted from January 28 to February. 1 using a sample extracted from the AmeriSpeak panel based on NORC probabilities, designed to be representative of the American population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is approximately 3.8 percentage points.
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On line:
AP-NORC Center: http://www.apnorc.org/.