55% of voters believe Trump indictment is 'politically motivated' as 45% of Americans prefer to Trump to Biden: polls

A Marist Poll revealed on Friday that more than 83% of Republicans think that former President Donald Trump should remain in the 2024 presidential race despite being federally indicted for the mishandling of classified documents. 50% of adults believe he has not done anything illegal or are unsure.  

The poll shows that 41% of independents believe the former president should continue his run while 50% of Republican-leaning independents say they are likely to vote for him if he stays in the race. 

Comparatively, a recent Harris Poll found that 55% of Americans say the federal indictment is politically motivated, while only 44% believe the former president should be convicted. The same poll shows that  72% of Americans believe Hillary Clinton mishandled classified documents, as do 65% about Joe Biden, and that 53% believe the indictment of Trump is a case of selective prosecution. 

If the 2024 Presidential election were held today, Trump would beat Biden by six points, with 85% of Republicans vowing to support the former president, per the poll. 69% of Americans believe that there should be another choice. 

The Marist Poll noted that among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 64% say they would vote for Trump while 32% say they would support another Republican candidate. This is a three-point jump from a CBS YouGov poll that showed the former president with 61% of support in the primary. 

Former President Trump has been indicted on two different sets of charges this year. The first in the state of New York for allegedly paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels. The second was federal charges after the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate and found documents from when he was president. 

Since the indictments, Trump has continued to rise in the polls. In January the former president had 48% of Republican voters supporting him. 50% of the respondents in The Harris Poll believe the increments will help him politically, while 56% think this is election interference on the part of the Department of Justice.