Donald Trump is still the frontrunner for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, a survey conducted mostly after he announced he was facing federal indictment shows, with 53% of Republican and GOP-leaning voters supporting him.
In the Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, 23% backed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and other GOP candidates all remained in the single digits. In May, Trump garnered 56% of the support, and DeSantis followed with 25%.
Trump also touted a surge in campaign contributions from his indictment. His campaign announced Wednesday it raised more than $4.5 million from digital solicitations “in just a few short days” since the indictment, as well as $2.1 million from a previously planned fundraiser held Tuesday night at Trump’s Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.
Trump 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 ex-president to face federal charges, Trump has called the indictment “election interference” by Democrats.
The former president saw a bump in the RealClearPolitics average of polls after he was indicted 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 $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 signaling she could make a charging decision in August over Trump’s 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 June 8-12 with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3.7 percentage points.
(Updates with campaign fundraising from third paragraph.)
