Majority of independents say Donald Trump received ‘fair trial’: Poll

A majority of independents say former President Trump received a fair trial in his New York hush-money criminal case, in a new poll conducted just days after he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to hide potentially damaging information ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

in CBS News/YouGov Poll In the poll released Sunday, 54% of independents said Trump received a fair trial, while 46% of independents said it was unfair. They were asked to rate the fairness of the trial “regardless of how they felt about the verdict.”

Overall, a majority of American adults (56%) similarly say Trump received a fair trial, while 44% say he did not.

When asked whether the jury was right or wrong in finding Trump guilty, responses were similar: 57% of American adults say the jury got it right and 43% say it was wrong. Among independents, 56% say the jury got it right and 44% say it was wrong.

Responses were sharply divided along partisan lines: Nearly all Democrats (96%) said Trump received a fair trial and that the jury reached the right verdict, while only 4% said the trial was unfair and the verdict wrong.

Republicans are slightly more likely to say the trial was unfair (86%) than to say it was wrong (82%). Only 14% say the trial was fair, and 18% say the verdict was just.

The poll came as mainstream Republicans, following the former president’s own example, slammed the verdict and branded the trial unfair and politically motivated.

On Friday, Trump issued his harshest denunciation yet of the trial’s judge, Juan Merchan, calling him a “devil” and slamming the trial as “rigged” and a “scam.” Those comments followed a fundraising appeal made shortly after the verdict was handed down, in which Trump called himself a “political prisoner.”

The CBS News/YouGov poll was conducted among 989 U.S. adults between May 30 and June 1, after Trump’s trial ended, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 5.2 percentage points.