After the guilty verdict, 49% of Americans say Trump should suspend his 2024 presidential campaign

A new poll conducted after former President Donald Trump was convicted shows that nearly half of Americans believe he should abandon his 2024 presidential campaign. In contrast, nearly half of Americans also believe that all of the charges against him in the hush money cases were politically motivated.

The latest post-conviction poll, released Sunday by ABC News/Ipsos, suggested trouble lies ahead for the Republican presidential candidate.

Despite the warning signs for Trump, positive opinions of him and his leading Democratic rival Joe Biden remained largely unchanged after Trump was declared the first-ever convicted former president in the historic New York trial. The poll was conducted from May 31 to June 1.

Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden: Results of the post-conviction poll

Although Americans largely agreed with the verdict (the poll found that 50% of respondents agreed with the verdict in the hush money trial), a quarter of Americans (23%) had no opinion on whether the verdict was correct or not. On the other hand, 27% of respondents did not support the verdict that Trump “falsified business records related to a payment to Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election.”

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Despite being found guilty on all 34 counts of impeachment on Thursday, Trump’s approval rating remained stable at 31%. As for Biden’s approval ratings, the results remained consistently low. His approval rating was at 32%, while a similar poll from March 2024 put his approval rating at 33%.

47 percent of Americans said the charges against him were politically motivated, while 38 percent disagreed. Just over half of Americans (51 percent) believe the former president was involved in something “illegal.” Of the rest, 12 percent believe he did something wrong, but not intentionally. At the same time, 19 percent firmly believe he did nothing wrong.

Cross-party divide and its translation into poll numbers

Across party lines, 16 percent of Republicans supported the ruling, which is the same percentage as those who agree that Trump should end his campaign. In contrast, 83 percent of Democrats approved of the ruling and 79 percent said Trump should withdraw from the presidential race.

Ultimately, 49 percent of poll respondents opposed the idea and suggested that Trump should abandon his presidential campaign. That number bore an eerie resemblance to the results of a similar 2023 poll conducted shortly after the Manhattan grand jury impeached Trump, when 48 percent of poll respondents said he should abandon his campaign.

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80 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats were convinced that the verdict was politically motivated.

Independents and double haters become the deciding factor

The numbers, which were clearly stable across all polls, showed a general unfavorability for both candidates. Ultimately, the ABC News poll suggested that the outcome could be significantly influenced by independent voters or “double haters.”

A majority of 52 percent of independents approved of Trump’s conviction and supported the idea that he should end his presidential campaign. 45 percent of independents thought the verdict was politically motivated.

Among opponents of double election fraud, these numbers reached a significant peak: 65 percent thought the verdict was correct. In addition, 67 percent agreed that Trump should withdraw his presidential candidacy. 50 percent of Americans who see both Trump and Biden as unfavorable candidates thought the hush money trial was politically motivated.

On a political level, Trump questioned the legality of the verdict, calling the prosecutors “bad… sick people.” His legal team plans to appeal the verdict. Trump himself called on the Supreme Court to intervene and overturn his guilty verdict.