Most Americans agree that former President Donald Trump should remain on the presidential ballot in November, while also believing that he should not have immunity from being prosecuted for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, a new poll indicates.
The Marquette Law School found that 62% of Americans disagree with Trump's argument that Special Council Jack Smith's election subversion case against the former president should be dismissed because he was ostensibly acting within his role as the president.
Pollsters conducted an experiment, however, where they specifically named Trump when speaking to half the respondents and simply said "former presidents" when speaking to the other half. When Trump was mentioned by name, support for his immunity claims rose by eight percentage points.
"The striking finding is that Republicans reverse themselves when asked about Trump rather than 'former presidents,'" Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll, told CNN.
"One implication is that Republicans are not paying enough attention to Trump's Supreme Court appeal to realize without prompting that the immunity case is about Trump," he told the outlet.
"Only when the question directly says, 'This is about Trump' do they swing sharply, reversing what they would think about 'former presidents' in general.
Regardless of their belief in the presumptive Republican candidate's legal woes, however, most Americans do think Trump should be on the ballot in November. Fifty-six percent of respondents agreed with the Supreme Court's decision that he should appear in Colorado's ballot, despite the argument that his actions on January 6 violate the 14th Amendment's ban on insurrectionists holding public office.
The Supreme Court unanimously agreed to keep Trump on the ballot, though the reasoning for the decision differed between justices. Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the post-Civil War constitutional amendment would be unlikely to specifically give this power to the states and not to Congress.
"Wouldn't that be the last place that you'd look for authorization for the states, including Confederate states, to ... enforce the presidential election process," he said during oral arguments.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan questioned the validity of giving so much power to one state, to determine election results for the entire country.
"I think that the question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States," she said. "It seems quite extraordinary, doesn't it?"
